Название руководства германии

The concept of Germany as a distinct region in Central Europe can be traced to Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul (France). The victory of the Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (AD 9) prevented annexation by the Roman Empire, although the Roman provinces of Germania Superior and Germania Inferior were established along the Rhine. Following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Franks conquered the other West Germanic tribes. When the Frankish Empire was divided among Charles the Great’s heirs in 843, the eastern part became East Francia. In 962, Otto I became the first Holy Roman Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the medieval German state.

The period of the High Middle Ages saw several important developments within the German-speaking areas of Europe. The first was the establishment of the trading conglomerate known as the Hanseatic League, which was dominated by a number of German port cities along the Baltic and North Sea coasts. The second was the growth of a crusading element within German christendom. This led to the establishment of the State of the Teutonic Order along the Baltic coast of what is today Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This crusader state led to the Christianization of these regions, as well as an extension of Germanic culture and language eastward. It would later become the Duchy and Kingdom of Prussia. Also during this period, German Emperors became embroiled in conflicts with the Catholic Church over various political issues, resulting in the Investiture Controversy.

In the Late Middle Ages, the regional dukes, princes, and bishops gained power at the expense of the emperors. Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation within the Catholic Church after 1517, as the northern and eastern states became Protestant, while most of the southern and western states remained Catholic. The two parts of the Holy Roman Empire clashed in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which was ruinous to the twenty million civilians living in both parts. The Thirty Years’ War brought tremendous destruction to Germany; more than 1/4 of the population in the German states were killed by the catastrophic war. The estates of the Holy Roman Empire attained a high extent of autonomy in the Peace of Westphalia, some of them being capable of their own foreign policies or controlling land outside of the Empire, the most important being Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. With the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, feudalism fell away by reforms and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon instead established the Confederation of the Rhine as his German puppet state. After the French defeat, the German Confederation was established under Austrian presidency. Thereafter liberalism and nationalism clashed with reaction. The German revolutions of 1848–49 failed. The Industrial Revolution modernized the German economy, led to the rapid growth of cities and the emergence of the socialist movement in Germany. Prussia, with its capital Berlin, grew in power. German universities became world-class centers for science and humanities, while music and art flourished. The unification of Germany (excluding Austria and the German-speaking areas of Switzerland) was achieved under the leadership of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the formation of the German Empire in 1871. This resulted in the Kleindeutsche Lösung, («small Germany solution», Germany without Austria), rather than the Großdeutsche Lösung, («greater Germany solution», Germany with Austria). The new Reichstag, an elected parliament, had only a limited role in the imperial government. Germany joined the other powers in colonial expansion in Africa and the Pacific.

By 1900, Germany was the dominant power on the European continent and its rapidly expanding industry had surpassed Britain’s while provoking it in a naval arms race. Germany led the Central Powers in World War I (1914–1918) against the Allied Powers. Defeated and partly occupied, Germany was forced to pay war reparations by the Treaty of Versailles and was stripped of its colonies and significant territory along its borders. The German Revolution of 1918–1919 put an end to the German Empire with the abdication of Wilhelm II on 9 November 1918 and established the Weimar Republic, an ultimately unstable parliamentary democracy. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, used the economic hardships of the Great Depression along with popular resentment over the terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I to establish a totalitarian regime. This Nazi Germany made racism, especially antisemitism, a central tenet of its policies, and became increasingly aggressive with its territorial demands, threatening war if they were not met. Germany quickly remilitarized, then annexed of Austria and the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia in 1938. After seizing the rest of Czechoslovakia, Germany launched an invasion of Poland, which quickly grew into World War II. During the war, the Nazi regime established a systematic genocide program known as the Holocaust which killed 17 million people, including 6 million Jews (representing 2/3rd of the European Jewish population of 1933). Following the Allied invasion of Normandy in June, 1944, the German Army was pushed back on all fronts until the final collapse in May 1945. Under occupation by the Allies, Austria was again made a separate country, denazification efforts took place, large populations under former German-occupied territories were displaced, German territories were split up by the victorious powers. Germany spent the entirety of the Cold War era divided into the NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany. Germans also fled from Communist areas into West Germany, which experienced rapid economic expansion, and became the dominant economy in Western Europe.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened, the Eastern Bloc collapsed, and East Germany was reunited with West Germany in 1990. The Franco-German friendship became the basis for the political integration of Western Europe in the European Union. In 1998–1999, Germany was one of the founding countries of the eurozone. Germany remains one of the economic powerhouses of Europe, contributing about 1/4 of the eurozone’s annual gross domestic product. In the early 2010s, Germany played a critical role in trying to resolve the escalating euro crisis, especially concerning Greece and other Southern European nations. In 2015, Germany faced the European migrant crisis as the main receiver of asylum seekers from Syria and other troubled regions. With the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine; Germany chose to join in solidarity with the EU members and other allies to make decisions against Russia and supporting Ukraine further, Germany also decided to strengthen its armed forces.

Prehistory[edit]

Pre-human ancestors, who were present in Germany over 11 million years ago, are theorized to be among the earliest ones to walk on two legs.^[1] The discovery of the Homo heidelbergensis mandible in 1907 affirms archaic human presence in Germany by at least 600,000 years ago.^[2] The oldest complete set of hunting weapons ever found anywhere in the world was excavated from a coal mine in Schöningen, Lower Saxony. Between 1994 and 1998, eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins between 1.82 and 2.25 m (5.97 and 7.38 ft) in length were eventually unearthed.^[3][4]

In 1856, the fossilized bones of an extinct human species were salvaged from a limestone grotto in the Neander valley near Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia. The archaic nature of the fossils, now known to be around 40,000 years old, was recognized and the characteristics published in the first-ever paleoanthropologic species description in 1858 by Hermann Schaaffhausen.^[5] The species was named Homo neanderthalensis – Neanderthal man in 1864.

The remains of Paleolithic early modern human occupation uncovered and documented in several caves in the Swabian Jura include various mammoth ivory sculptures that rank among the oldest uncontested works of art and several flutes, made of bird bone and mammoth ivory that are confirmed to be the oldest musical instruments ever found. The 40,000-year-old Löwenmensch figurine represents the oldest uncontested figurative work of art and the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels has been asserted as the oldest uncontested object of human figurative art ever discovered.^[6][7][8][9] These artefacts are attributed to the Aurignacian culture.

Between 12,900 and 11,700 years ago, north-central Germany was part of the Ahrensburg culture (named for Ahrensburg).

The first groups of early farmers different from the indigenous hunter-gatherers to migrate into Europe came from a population in western Anatolia at the beginning of the Neolithic period between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago.^[14]

Central Germany was one of the primary areas of the Linear Pottery culture (c. 5500 BC to 4500 BC), which was partially contemporary with the Ertebølle culture (c. 5300 BC to 3950 BC) of Denmark and northern Germany. The construction of the Central European Neolithic circular enclosures falls in this time period with the best known and oldest being the Goseck circle, constructed c. 4900 BC. Afterwards, northeastern Germany, along with great parts of Poland and Denmark, was part of the Funnelbeaker culture (c. 4300 BC to 2800 BC). The oldest traces for the use of wheel and wagon ever found are located at a northern German site and date to around 3400 BC.^[15]

The settlers of the Corded Ware culture (c. 2900 BC to 2350 BC), that had spread all over the fertile plains of Central Europe during the Late Neolithic were of Indo-European ancestry. The Indo-Europeans had, via mass-migration, arrived into the heartland of Europe around 4,500 years ago.^[16]

By the late Bronze Age, the Urnfield culture (c. 1300 BC to 750 BC) had replaced the Bell Beaker, Unetice and Tumulus cultures in central Europe,^[17] whilst the Nordic Bronze Age had developed in Scandinavia and northern Germany. The Hallstatt culture, which had developed from the Urnfield culture, was the predominant Western and Central European culture from the 12th to 8th centuries BC and during the early Iron Age (8th to 6th centuries BC). It was followed by the La Tène culture (5th to 1st centuries BC).

The people who had adopted these cultural characteristics are regarded as Celts. How and if the Celts are related to the Urnfield culture remains disputed. However, Celtic cultural centres developed in central Europe during the late Bronze Age (circa 1200 BC until 700 BC). Some, like the Heuneburg, the oldest city north of the Alps,^[18] grew to become important cultural centres of the Iron Age in Central Europe, that maintained trade routes to the Mediterranean. In the 5th century BC the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned a Celtic city at the Danube – Pyrene, that historians attribute to the Heuneburg. Beginning around 700 BC (or later), Germanic peoples (Germanic tribes) from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany expanded south and gradually replaced the Celtic peoples in Central Europe.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24]}

Early history: Germanic tribes, Roman conquests, and the Migration Period[edit]

Early migrations, the Suebi and the Roman Republic[edit]

The ethnogenesis of the Germanic tribes remains debated. However, for author Averil Cameron «it is obvious that a steady process» occurred during the Nordic Bronze Age, or at the latest during the Pre-Roman Iron Age^[26] (Jastorf culture). From their homes in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany the tribes began expanding south, east and west during the 1st century BC,^[27] and came into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul, as well as with Iranic,^[28] Baltic,^[29] and Slavic cultures in Central/Eastern Europe.^[30]

Factual and detailed knowledge about the early history of the Germanic tribes is rare. Researchers have to be content with the recordings of the tribes’ affairs with the Romans, linguistic conclusions, archaeological discoveries and the rather new yet auspicious results of archaeogenetic study.^[31] In the mid-1st century BC, Republican Roman statesman Julius Caesar erected the first known bridges across the Rhine during his campaign in Gaul and led a military contingent across and into the territories of the local Germanic tribes. After several days and having made no contact with Germanic troops (who had retreated inland) Caesar returned to the west of the river.^[32] By 60 BC, the Suebi tribe under chieftain Ariovistus, had conquered lands of the Gallic Aedui tribe to the west of the Rhine. Consequent plans to populate the region with Germanic settlers from the east were vehemently opposed by Caesar, who had already launched his ambitious campaign to subjugate all Gaul. Julius Caesar defeated the Suebi forces in 58 BC in the Battle of Vosges and forced Ariovistus to retreat across the Rhine.^[33][34]

Roman settlement of the Rhine[edit]

Augustus, first emperor of the Roman Empire, considered conquest beyond the Rhine and the Danube not only regular foreign policy but also necessary to counter Germanic incursions into a still rebellious Gaul. A series of forts and commercial centers were established along the two rivers. Some tribes, such as the Ubii consequently allied with Rome and readily adopted advanced Roman culture. During the 1st century CE Roman legions conducted extended campaigns into Germania magna, the area north of the Upper Danube and east of the Rhine, attempting to subdue the various tribes. Roman ideas of administration, the imposition of taxes and a legal framework were frustrated by the total absence of an infrastructure. The campaigns of Germanicus, for example were almost exclusively characterized by frequent massacres of villagers and indiscriminate pillaging. The tribes, however maintained their elusive identities. In 9 AD a coalition of tribes under the Cherusci chieftain Arminius, who was familiar with Roman tactical doctrines, defeated a sizeable Roman force in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Consequently, Rome resolved to permanently establish the Rhine/Danube border and refrain from further territorial advance into Germania.^[35][36] By AD 100 the frontier along the Rhine and the Danube and the Limes Germanicus was firmly established. Several Germanic tribes lived under Roman rule south and west of the border, as described in Tacitus’s Germania. These lands represent the modern states Baden-Württemberg, southern Bavaria, southern Hesse, Saarland and the Rhineland. Austria formed the regular provinces of Noricum and Raetia.^[37][38][39] The provinces Germania Inferior (with the capital situated at Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, modern Cologne) and Germania Superior (with its capital at Mogontiacum, modern Mainz), were formally established in 85 AD, after long and painful campaigns as lasting military control was confined to the lands surrounding the rivers.^[40] Christianity was introduced to Roman controlled western Germania well before the Middle Ages, with Christian religious structures such as the Aula Palatina of Trier built during the reign of Constantine I (r. 306–337 AD).^[41]

Migration Period and decline of the Western Roman Empire[edit]

Rome’s Third Century Crisis coincided with the emergence of a number of large West Germanic tribes: the Alamanni, Franks, Bavarii, Chatti, Saxons, Frisii, Sicambri, and Thuringii. By the 3rd century the Germanic speaking peoples began to migrate beyond the limes and the Danube frontier.^[42] Several large tribes – the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Saxons and Franks – migrated and played their part in the decline of the Roman Empire and the transformation of the old Western Roman Empire.^[43] By the end of the 4th century the Huns invaded eastern and central Europe, establishing the Hunnic Empire. The event triggered the Migration Period.^[44] Hunnic hegemony over a vast territory in central and eastern Europe lasted until the death of Attila’s son Dengizich in 469.^[45] Another pivotal moment in the Migration Period was the Crossing of the Rhine in December of 406 by a large group of tribes including Vandals, Alans and Suebi who settled permanently within the crumbling Western Roman Empire.^[46]

Stem duchies and marches[edit]

Stem duchies (German: Stammesherzogtümer) in Germany refer to the traditional territory of the various Germanic tribes. The concept of such duchies survived especially in the areas which by the 9th century would constitute East Francia,^[47] which included the Duchy of Bavaria, the Duchy of Swabia, the Duchy of Saxony, the Duchy of Franconia and the Duchy of Thuringia,^[48] unlike further west the County of Burgundy or Lorraine in Middle Francia.^[49]
[50]

The Salian emperors (reigned 1027–1125) retained the stem duchies as the major divisions of Germany, but they became increasingly obsolete during the early high-medieval period under the Hohenstaufen, and Frederick Barbarossa finally abolished them in 1180 in favour of more numerous territorial duchies.

Successive kings of Germany founded a series of border counties or marches in the east and the north. These included Lusatia, the North March (which would become Brandenburg and the heart of the future Prussia), and the Billung March. In the south, the marches included Carniola, Styria, and the March of Austria that would become Austria.

Middle Ages[edit]

Frankish Empire[edit]

The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 with the deposition of Romulus Augustus by the Germanic foederati leader Odoacer, who became the first King of Italy.^[51] Afterwards, the Franks, like other post-Roman Western Europeans, emerged as a tribal confederacy in the Middle Rhine-Weser region, among the territory soon to be called Austrasia (the «eastern land»), the northeastern portion of the future Kingdom of the Merovingian Franks. As a whole, Austrasia comprised parts of present-day France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Unlike the Alamanni to their south in Swabia, they absorbed large swaths of former Roman territory as they spread west into Gaul, beginning in 250. Clovis I of the Merovingian dynasty conquered northern Gaul in 486 and in the Battle of Tolbiac in 496 the Alemanni tribe in Swabia, which eventually became the Duchy of Swabia.

By 500, Clovis had united all the Frankish tribes, ruled all of Gaul^[52] and was proclaimed King of the Franks between 509 and 511.^[53] Clovis, unlike most Germanic rulers of the time, was baptized directly into Roman Catholicism instead of Arianism. His successors would cooperate closely with papal missionaries, among them Saint Boniface. After the death of Clovis in 511, his four sons partitioned his kingdom including Austrasia. Authority over Austrasia passed back and forth from autonomy to royal subjugation, as successive Merovingian kings alternately united and subdivided the Frankish lands.^[54]

During the 5th and 6th centuries the Merovingian kings conquered the Thuringii (531 to 532), the Kingdom of the Burgundians and the principality of Metz and defeated the Danes, the Saxons and the Visigoths.^[55] King Chlothar I (558 to 561) ruled the greater part of what is now Germany and undertook military expeditions into Saxony, while the South-east of what is modern Germany remained under the influence of the Ostrogoths. Saxons controlled the area from the northern sea board to the Harz Mountains and the Eichsfeld in the south.^[56]

The Merovingians placed the various regions of their Frankish Empire under the control of semi-autonomous dukes – either Franks or local rulers,^[57] and followed imperial Roman strategic traditions of social and political integration of the newly conquered territories.^[58][59] While allowed to preserve their own legal systems,^[60] the conquered Germanic tribes were pressured to abandon the Arian Christian faith.^[61]

In 718 Charles Martel waged war against the Saxons in support of the Neustrians. In 743 his son Carloman in his role as Mayor of the Palace renewed the war against the Saxons, who had allied with and aided the duke Odilo of Bavaria.^[62] The Catholic Franks, who by 750 controlled a vast territory in Gaul, north-western Germany, Swabia, Burgundy and western Switzerland, that included the alpine passes allied with the Curia in Rome against the Lombards, who posed a permanent threat to the Holy See.^[52] Pressed by Liutprand, King of the Lombards, a Papal envoy for help had already been sent to the de facto ruler Charles Martel after his victory in 732 over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Tours, however a lasting and mutually beneficial alliance would only materialize after Charles’ death under his successor Duke of the Franks, Pepin the Short.^[63]

In 751 Pippin III, Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian king, himself assumed the title of king and was anointed by the Church. Pope Stephen II bestowed him the hereditary title of Patricius Romanorum as protector of Rome and St. Peter^[64] in response to the Donation of Pepin, that guaranteed the sovereignty of the Papal States. Charles the Great (who ruled the Franks from 774 to 814) launched a decades-long military campaign against the Franks’ heathen rivals, the Saxons and the Avars. The campaigns and insurrections of the Saxon Wars lasted from 772 to 804. The Franks eventually overwhelmed the Saxons and Avars, forcibly converted the people to Christianity, and annexed their lands to the Carolingian Empire.

Foundation of the Holy Roman Empire[edit]

After the death of Frankish king Pepin the Short in 768, his oldest son «Charlemagne» («Charles the Great») consolidated his power over and expanded the Kingdom. Charlemagne ended 200 years of Royal Lombard rule with the Siege of Pavia, and in 774 he installed himself as King of the Lombards. Loyal Frankish nobles replaced the old Lombard aristocracy following a rebellion in 776.^[65] The next 30 years of his reign were spent ruthlessly strengthening his power in Francia and on the conquest of the Slavs and Pannonian Avars in the east and all tribes, such as the Saxons and the Bavarians.^[66][67] On Christmas Day, 800 AD, Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans) in Rome by Pope Leo III.^[67]

Fighting among Charlemagne’s three grandsons over the continuation of the custom of partible inheritance or the introduction of primogeniture caused the Carolingian empire to be partitioned into three parts by the Treaty of Verdun of 843.^[68] Louis the German received the Eastern portion of the kingdom, East Francia, all lands east of the Rhine river and to the north of Italy. This encompassed the territories of the German stem duchies – Franks, Saxons, Swabians, and Bavarians – that were united in a federation under the first non-Frankish king Henry the Fowler, who ruled from 919 to 936.^[69] The royal court permanently moved in between a series of strongholds, called Kaiserpfalzen, that developed into economic and cultural centers. Aachen Palace played a central role, as the local Palatine Chapel served as the official site for all royal coronation ceremonies during the entire Medieval period until 1531.^[67][70]

The Holy Roman Empire, maps

Otto the Great[edit]

In 936, Otto I was crowned German king at Aachen, in 961 King of Italy in Pavia and crowned emperor by Pope John XII in Rome in 962. The tradition of the German King as protector of the Kingdom of Italy and the Latin Church resulted in the term Holy Roman Empire in the 12th century. The name, that was to identify with Germany continued to be used officially, with the extension added: Nationis Germanicæ (of the German nation) after the last imperial coronation in Rome in 1452 until its dissolution in 1806.^[69] Otto strengthened the royal authority by re-asserting the old Carolingian rights over ecclesiastical appointments.^[71] Otto wrested from the nobles the powers of appointment of the bishops and abbots, who controlled large land holdings. Additionally, Otto revived the old Carolingian program of appointing missionaries in the border lands. Otto continued to support celibacy for the higher clergy, so ecclesiastical appointments never became hereditary. By granting lands to the abbots and bishops he appointed, Otto actually turned these bishops into «princes of the Empire» (Reichsfürsten).^[72] In this way, Otto was able to establish a national church. Outside threats to the kingdom were contained with the decisive defeat of the Hungarian Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. The Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder rivers were also subjugated. Otto marched on Rome and drove John XII from the papal throne and for years controlled the election of the pope, setting a firm precedent for imperial control of the papacy for years to come.^[73][74]

During the reign of Conrad II’s son, Henry III (1039 to 1056), the empire supported the Cluniac reforms of the Church, the Peace of God, prohibition of simony (the purchase of clerical offices), and required celibacy of priests. Imperial authority over the Pope reached its peak. However, Rome reacted with the creation of the College of Cardinals and Pope Gregory VII’s series of clerical reforms. Pope Gregory insisted in his Dictatus Papae on absolute papal authority over appointments to ecclesiastical offices. The subsequent conflict in which emperor Henry IV was compelled to submit to the Pope at Canossa in 1077, after having been excommunicated came to be known as the Investiture Controversy. In 1122, a temporary reconciliation was reached between Henry V and the Pope with the Concordat of Worms. With the conclusion of the dispute the Roman church and the papacy regained supreme control over all religious affairs.^[75][76] Consequently, the imperial Ottonian church system (Reichskirche) declined. It also ended the royal/imperial tradition of appointing selected powerful clerical leaders to counter the Imperial secular princes.^[77]

Between 1095 and 1291 the various campaigns of the crusades to the Holy Land took place. Knightly religious orders were established, including the Knights Templar, the Knights of St John (Knights Hospitaller), and the Teutonic Order.^[78][79]

The term sacrum imperium (Holy Empire) was first used officially by Friedrich I in 1157,^[80] but the words Sacrum Romanum Imperium, Holy Roman Empire, were only combined in July 1180 and would never consistently appear on official documents from 1254 onwards.^[81]

Hanseatic League[edit]

The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive alliance of the merchant guilds of towns and cities in northern and central Europe that dominated marine trade in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and along the connected navigable rivers during the Late Middle Ages ( 12th to 15th centuries ). Each of the affiliated cities retained the legal system of its sovereign and, with the exception of the Free imperial cities, had only a limited degree of political autonomy.^[82] Beginning with an agreement of the cities of Lübeck and Hamburg, guilds cooperated in order to strengthen and combine their economic assets, like securing trading routes and tax privileges, to control prices and better protect and market their local commodities. Important centers of commerce within the empire, such as Cologne on the Rhine river and Bremen on the North Sea joined the union, which resulted in greater diplomatic esteem.^[83] Recognized by the various regional princes for the great economic potential, favorable charters for, often exclusive, commercial operations were granted.^[84] During its zenith the alliance maintained trading posts and kontors in virtually all cities between London and Edinburgh in the west to Novgorod in the east and Bergen in Norway. By the late 14th century the powerful league enforced its interests with military means, if necessary. This culminated in a war with the sovereign Kingdom of Denmark from 1361 to 1370. Principal city of the Hanseatic League remained Lübeck, where in 1356 the first general diet was held and its official structure was announced. The league declined after 1450 due to a number of factors, such as the 15th-century crisis, the territorial lords’ shifting policies towards greater commercial control, the silver crisis and marginalization in the wider Eurasian trade network, among others.^[85][86]

Eastward expansion[edit]

The Ostsiedlung (lit. Eastern settlement) is the term for a process of largely uncoordinated immigration and chartering of settlement structures by ethnic Germans into territories, already inhabited by Slavs and Balts east of the Saale and Elbe rivers, such as modern Poland and Silesia and to the south into Bohemia, modern Hungary and Romania during the High Middle Ages from the 11th to the 14th century.^[87][88] The primary purpose of the early imperial military campaigns into the lands to the east during the 10th and 11th century, was to punish and subjugate the local heathen tribes. Conquered territories were mostly lost after the troops had retreated, but eventually were incorporated into the empire as marches, fortified borderlands with garrisoned troops in strongholds and castles, who were to ensure military control and enforce the exaction of tributes. Contemporary sources do not support the idea of policies or plans for the organized settlement of civilians.^[89]

Emperor Lothair II re-established feudal sovereignty over Poland, Denmark and Bohemia from 1135 and appointed margraves to turn the borderlands into hereditary fiefs and install a civilian administration. There is no discernible chronology of the immigration process as it took place in many individual efforts and stages, often even encouraged by the Slavic regional lords. However, the new communities were subjected to German law and customs. Total numbers of settlers were generally rather low and, depending on who held a numerical majority, populations usually assimilated into each other. In many regions only enclaves would persist, like Hermannstadt, founded by the Transylvanian Saxons in the medieval Hungarian Kingdom(today in Romania) who called on by Geza II. in 1147[Saxons called those part of Transylvania as «Altland» to distinguish it from later immigrant Saxon settlements what established about 1220 by Teutonic Order]^[90][91]

In 1230, the Catholic monastic order of the Teutonic Knights launched the Prussian Crusade. The campaign, that was supported by the forces of Polish duke Konrad I of Masovia, initially intended to Christianize the Baltic Old Prussians, succeeded primarily in the conquest of large territories. The order, emboldened by imperial approval, quickly resolved to establish an independent state, without the consent of duke Konrad. Recognizing only papal authority and based on a solid economy, the order steadily expanded the Teutonic state during the following 150 years, engaging in several land disputes with its neighbors. Permanent conflicts with the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic, eventually led to military defeat and containment by the mid-15th century. The last Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg converted to Lutheranism in 1525 and turned the remaining lands of the order into the secular Duchy of Prussia.^[92][93]

Church and state[edit]

Henry V (1086–1125), great-grandson of Conrad II, who had overthrown his father Henry IV became Holy Roman Emperor in 1111. Hoping to gain greater control over the church inside the Empire, Henry V appointed Adalbert of Saarbrücken as the powerful archbishop of Mainz in the same year. Adalbert began to assert the powers of the Church against secular authorities, that is, the Emperor. This precipitated the «Crisis of 1111» as yet another chapter of the long-term Investiture Controversy.^[94] In 1137, the prince-electors turned back to the Hohenstaufen family for a candidate, Conrad III. Conrad tried to divest his rival Henry the Proud of his two duchies—Bavaria and Saxony—that led to war in southern Germany as the empire was divided into two powerful factions. The faction of the Welfs or Guelphs (in Italian) supported the House of Welf of Henry the Proud, which was the ruling dynasty in the Duchy of Bavaria. The rival faction of the Waiblings or Ghibellines (in Italian) pledged allegiance to the Swabian House of Hohenstaufen. During this early period, the Welfs generally maintained ecclesiastical independence under the papacy and political particularism (the focus on ducal interests against the central imperial authority). The Waiblings, on the other hand, championed strict control of the church and a strong central imperial government.^[95]

During the reign of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), an accommodation was reached in 1156 between the two factions. The Duchy of Bavaria was returned to Henry the Proud’s son Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, who represented the Guelph party. However, the Margraviate of Austria was separated from Bavaria and turned into the independent Duchy of Austria by virtue of the Privilegium Minus in 1156.^[96]

Having become wealthy through trade, the confident cities of Northern Italy, supported by the Pope, increasingly opposed Barbarossa’s claim of feudal rule (Honor Imperii) over Italy. The cities united in the Lombard League and finally defeated Barbarossa in the Battle of Legnano in 1176. The following year a reconciliation was reached between the emperor and Pope Alexander III in the Treaty of Venice.^[97] The 1183 Peace of Constance eventually settled that the Italian cities remained loyal to the empire but were granted local jurisdiction and full regal rights in their territories.^[98]

In 1180, Henry the Lion was outlawed, Saxony was divided, and Bavaria was given to Otto of Wittelsbach, who founded the Wittelsbach dynasty, which was to rule Bavaria until 1918.

From 1184 to 1186, the empire under Frederick I Barbarossa reached its cultural peak with the Diet of Pentecost held at Mainz and the marriage of his son Henry in Milan to the Norman princess Constance of Sicily.^[99] The power of the feudal lords was undermined by the appointment of ministerials (unfree servants of the Emperor) as officials. Chivalry and the court life flowered, as expressed in the scholastic philosophy of Albertus Magnus and the literature of Wolfram von Eschenbach.^[100]

Between 1212 and 1250, Frederick II established a modern, professionally administered state from his base in Sicily. He resumed the conquest of Italy, leading to further conflict with the Papacy. In the Empire, extensive sovereign powers were granted to ecclesiastical and secular princes, leading to the rise of independent territorial states. The struggle with the Pope sapped the Empire’s strength, as Frederick II was excommunicated three times. After his death, the Hohenstaufen dynasty fell, followed by an interregnum during which there was no Emperor (1250–1273). This interregnum came to an end with the election of a small Swabian count, Rudolf of Habsburg, as emperor.^[101][102]

The failure of negotiations between Emperor Louis IV and the papacy led to the 1338 Declaration at Rhense by six princes of the Imperial Estate to the effect that election by all or the majority of the electors automatically conferred the royal title and rule over the empire, without papal confirmation. As result, the monarch was no longer subject to papal approbation and became increasingly dependent on the favour of the electors. Between 1346 and 1378 Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, sought to restore imperial authority. The 1356 decree of the Golden Bull stipulated that all future emperors were to be chosen by a college of only seven – four secular and three clerical – electors. The secular electors were the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, the clerical electors were the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne.^[103]

Between 1347 and 1351 Germany and almost the entire European continent were consumed by the most severe outbreak of the Black Death pandemic. Estimated to have caused the abrupt death of 30 to 60% of Europe’s population, it led to widespread social and economic disruption and deep religious disaffection and fanaticism. Minority groups, and Jews in particular were blamed, singled out and attacked. As a consequence, many Jews fled and resettled in Eastern Europe.^[104][105]

Towns and cities[edit]

Total population estimates of the German territories range around 5 to 6 million by the end of Henry III’s reign in 1056 and about 7 to 8 million after Friedrich Barabarossa’s rule in 1190.^[106][107] The vast majority were farmers, typically in a state of serfdom under feudal lords and monasteries.^[95] Towns gradually emerged and in the 12th century many new cities were founded along the trading routes and near imperial strongholds and castles. The towns were subjected to the municipal legal system. Cities such as Cologne, that had acquired the status of Imperial Free Cities, were no longer answerable to the local landlords or bishops, but immediate subjects of the Emperor and enjoyed greater commercial and legal liberties.^[108] The towns were ruled by a council of the – usually mercantile – elite, the patricians. Craftsmen formed guilds, governed by strict rules, which sought to obtain control of the towns; a few were open to women. Society had diversified, but was divided into sharply demarcated classes of the clergy, physicians, merchants, various guilds of artisans, unskilled day labourers and peasants. Full citizenship was not available to paupers. Political tensions arose from issues of taxation, public spending, regulation of business, and market supervision, as well as the limits of corporate autonomy.^[109]

Cologne’s central location on the Rhine river placed it at the intersection of the major trade routes between east and west and was the basis of Cologne’s growth.^[110] The economic structures of medieval and early modern Cologne were characterized by the city’s status as a major harbor and transport hub upon the Rhine. It was the seat of an archbishop, under whose patronage the vast Cologne Cathedral was built since 1240. The cathedral houses sacred Christian relics and it has since become a well known pilgrimage destination. By 1288 the city had secured its independence from the archbishop (who relocated to Bonn), and was ruled by its burghers.^[111]

Towns and cities of the Medieval and Early Modern Holy Roman Empire

Learning and culture[edit]

Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) wrote several influential theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and arguably the oldest surviving morality play, Ordo Virtutum, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations. About 100 years later, Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170 – c. 1230) became the most celebrated of the Minnesänger, who were Middle High German lyric poets.

Around 1439, Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, used movable type printing and issued the Gutenberg Bible. He was the global inventor of the printing press, thereby starting the Printing Revolution. Cheap printed books and pamphlets played central roles for the spread of the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.

Around the transition from the 15th to the 16th century, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremberg established his reputation across Europe as painter, printmaker, mathematician, engraver, and theorist when he was still in his twenties and secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance.

Early modern Germany[edit]

See List of states in the Holy Roman Empire for subdivisions and the political structure

[edit]

The early-modern European society gradually developed after the disasters of the 14th century as religious obedience and political loyalties declined in the wake of the Great Plague, the schism of the Church and prolonged dynastic wars. The rise of the cities and the emergence of the new burgher class eroded the societal, legal and economic order of feudalism.^[113]

The commercial enterprises of the mercantile elites in the quickly developing cities in South Germany (such as Augsburg and Nuremberg), with the most prominent families being the Gossembrots, Fuggers (the wealthiest family in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries^[116]), Welsers, Hochstetters, Imholts, generated unprecedented financial means. As financiers to both the leading ecclesiastical and secular rulers, these families fundamentally influenced the political affairs in the empire during the fifteenth and sixteenth century.^{[117][118][119][120]} The increasingly money based economy also provoked social discontent among knights and peasants and predatory «robber knights» became common.^[121]

From 1438 the Habsburg dynasty, who had acquired control in the south-eastern empire over the Duchy of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary after the death of King Louis II in 1526, managed to permanently occupy the position of the Holy Roman Emperor until 1806 (with the exception of the years between 1742 and 1745).

Some Europe-wide revolutions were born in the Empire: the combination of the first modern postal system established by Maximilian (with the management under the Taxis family) with the printing system invented by Gutenberg produced a communication revolution^{[122][123][124]} – the Empire’s decentralized nature made censorship difficult and this combined with the new communication system to facilitate free expression, thus elevating cultural life. The system also helped the authorities to disseminate orders and policies, boosted the Empire’s coherence in general, and helped reformers like Luther to broadcast their views and communicate with each other effectively, thus contributing to the religious Reformation.^{[125][126][127]}

Maximilian’s military reforms, especially his development of the Landsknechte, caused a military revolution that broke the back of the knight class^[128][129] and spread all over Europe shortly after his death.^[130][131]

Imperial reform[edit]

During his reign from 1493 to 1519, Maximilian I, in a combined effort with the Estates (who sometimes acted as opponents and sometimes as cooperators to him), his officials and his humanists, reformed the empire. A dual system of Supreme Courts (the Reichskammergericht and the Reichshofrat) was established (with the Reichshofrat playing a more efficient role during the Early Modern period),^[136] together with the formalized Reception of Roman Law;^{[137][138][139][140]} the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) became the all-important political forum and the supreme legal and constitutional institution, which would act as a guarantee for the preservation of the Empire in the long run;^[141][142] a Permanent Land Piece (Ewiger Landfriede) was declared in 1495 with regional leagues and unions providing the supporting structure, together with the creation of the Reichskreise (Imperial Circles, which would serve the purpose of organize imperial armies, collect taxes and enforce orders of the imperial institutions);^{[143][144][145]} the Imperial and Court Chanceries were combined to become the decisive government institution;^[146][147] the Landsknechte that Maximilian created became a form of imperial army;^[148] a national political culture began to emerge;^[149][150] and the German language began to attain an unified form.^[151][152] The political structure remained incomplete and piecemeal though, mainly due to the failure of the Common Penny (an imperial tax) that the Estates resisted.^[136][a] Through many compromises between emperor and estates though, a flexible, future-oriented problem-solving mechanism for the Empire was formed, together with a monarchy through which the emperor shared power with the Estates.^[154][b] Whether the Reform also equated to a (successful or unsuccessful) nation building process remains a debate.^[156]

The addition Nationis Germanicæ (of German Nation) to the emperor’s title appeared first in the 15th century: in a 1486 law decreed by Frederick III and in 1512 in reference to the Imperial Diet in Cologne by Maximilian I. In 1525, the Heilbronn reform plan – the most advanced document of the German Peasants’ War (Deutscher Bauernkrieg) – referred to the Reich as von Teutscher Nation (of German nation). During the fifteen century, the term «German nation» had witness a rise in use due to the growth of a «community of interests». The Estates also increasingly distinguished between their German Reich and the wider, «universal» Reich.^[157]

Protestant Reformation[edit]

In order to manage their ever growing expenses, the Renaissance Popes of the 15th and early 16th century promoted the excessive sale of indulgences and offices and titles of the Roman Curia.

In 1517, the monk Martin Luther published a pamphlet with 95 Theses that he posted in the town square of Wittenberg and handed copies to feudal lords. Whether he nailed them to a church door at Wittenberg remains unclear. The list detailed 95 assertions, he argued, represented corrupt practice of the Christian faith and misconduct within the Catholic Church. Although perhaps not Luther’s chief concern, he received popular support for his condemnation of the sale of indulgences and clerical offices, the pope’s and higher clergy’s abuse of power and his doubts of the very idea of the institution of the Church and the papacy.^[158]

The Protestant Reformation was the first successful challenge to the Catholic Church and began in 1521 as Luther was outlawed at the Diet of Worms after his refusal to repent. The ideas of the reformation spread rapidly, as the new technology of the modern printing press ensured cheap mass copies and distribution of the theses and helped by the Emperor Charles V’s wars with France and the Turks.^[158] Hiding in the Wartburg Castle, Luther translated the Bible into German, thereby greatly contributing to the establishment of the modern German language. This is highlighted by the fact that Luther spoke only a local dialect of minor importance during that time. After the publication of his Bible, his dialect suppressed others and constitutes to a great extent what is now modern German. With the protestation of the Lutheran princes at the Imperial Diet of Speyer in 1529 and the acceptance and adoption of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession by the Lutheran princes beginning in 1530, the separate Lutheran church was established.^[159]

The 1524/25 German Peasants’ War, that began in the southwest in Alsace and Swabia and spread further east into Franconia, Thuringia and Austria, was a series of economic and religious revolts of the rural lower classes, encouraged by the rhetoric of various radical religious reformers and Anabaptists against the ruling feudal lords. Although occasionally assisted by war-experienced noblemen like Götz von Berlichingen and Florian Geyer (in Franconia) and the theologian Thomas Müntzer (in Thuringia), the peasant forces lacked military structure, skill, logistics and equipment and as many as 100,000 insurgents were eventually defeated and massacred by the territorial princes.^[160]

The Catholic Counter-Reformation, initiated in 1545 at the Council of Trent was spearheaded by the scholarly religious Jesuit order, that was founded just five years prior by several clerics around Ignatius of Loyola. Its intent was to challenge and contain the Protestant Reformation via apologetic and polemical writings and decrees, ecclesiastical reconfiguration, wars and imperial political maneuverings. In 1547, emperor Charles V defeated the Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance of Protestant rulers.^[161] The 1555 Peace of Augsburg decreed the recognition of the Lutheran Faith and religious division of the empire. It also stipulated the ruler’s right to determine the official confession in his principality (Cuius regio, eius religio). The Counter-Reformation eventually failed to reintegrate the central and northern German Lutheran states. In 1608/1609 the Protestant Union and the Catholic League were formed.

Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648[edit]

The 1618 to 1648 Thirty Years’ War, that took place almost exclusively in the Holy Roman Empire has its origins, which remain widely debated, in the unsolved and recurring conflicts of the Catholic and Protestant factions. The Catholic emperor Ferdinand II attempted to achieve the religious and political unity of the empire, while the opposing Protestant Union forces were determined to defend their religious rights. The religious motive served as the universal justification for the various territorial and foreign princes, who over the course of several stages joined either of the two warring parties in order to gain land and power.^[162][163]

The conflict was sparked by the revolt of the Protestant nobility of Bohemia against emperor Matthias’ succession policies. After imperial triumph at the Battle of White Mountain and a short-lived peace, the war grew to become a political European conflict by the intervention of King Christian IV of Denmark from 1625 to 1630, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden from 1630 to 1648 and France under Cardinal Richelieu from 1635 to 1648. The conflict increasingly evolved into a struggle between the French House of Bourbon and the House of Habsburg for predominance in Europe, for which the central German territories of the empire served as the battleground.^[164]

The war ranks among the most catastrophic in history as three decades of constant warfare and destruction had left the land devastated. Marauding armies incessantly pillaged the countryside, seized and levied heavy taxes on cities and indiscriminately plundered the food stocks of the peasantry. There were also the countless bands of murderous outlaws, sick, homeless, disrupted people and invalid soldiery. Overall social and economic disruption caused a dramatic decline in population as a result of pandemic murder and random rape and killings, endemic infectious diseases, crop failures, famine, declining birth rates, wanton burglary, witch-hunts and the emigration of terrified people. Estimates vary between a 38% drop from 16 million people in 1618 to 10 million by 1650 and a mere 20% drop from 20 million to 16 million. The Altmark and Württemberg regions were especially hard hit, where it took generations to fully recover.^[162][165]

The war was the last major religious struggle in mainland Europe and ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. It resulted in increased autonomy for the constituent states of the Holy Roman Empire, limiting the power of the emperor. Most of Alsace was ceded to France, Western Pomerania and Bremen-Verden were given to Sweden as Imperial fiefs, and the Netherlands officially left the Empire.^[166]

Culture and literacy[edit]

The population of Germany reached about twenty million people by the mid-16th century, the great majority of whom were peasant farmers.^[168]

The Protestant Reformation was a triumph for literacy and the new printing press.^{[169][c][171][172]} Luther’s translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534) was a decisive impulse for the increase of literacy of literacy in early modern Germany,^[167] and stimulated printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward religious pamphlets flooded Germany and much of Europe. The Reformation instigated a media revolution as by 1530 over 10,000 individual works are published with a total of ten million copies. Luther strengthened his attacks on Rome by depicting a «good» against «bad» church. It soon became clear that print could be used for propaganda in the Reformation for particular agendas. Reform writers used pre-Reformation styles, clichés, and stereotypes and changed items as needed for their own purposes.^[173] Especially effective were Luther’s Small Catechism, for use of parents teaching their children, and Larger Catechism, for pastors.^[174] Using the German vernacular they expressed the Apostles’ Creed in simpler, more personal, Trinitarian language. Illustrations in the newly translated Bible and in many tracts popularized Luther’s ideas. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), the great painter patronized by the electors of Wittenberg, was a close friend of Luther, and illustrated Luther’s theology for a popular audience. He dramatized Luther’s views on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, while remaining mindful of Luther’s careful distinctions about proper and improper uses of visual imagery.^[175]

Luther’s translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to Modern Standard German.^[167] The publication of Luther’s Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany,^[167] and promoted the development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area.^[176]

Science[edit]

Notable late fifteenth to early eighteenth-century polymaths include: Johannes Trithemius, one of the founder of modern cryptography, founder of steganography, as well as bibliography and literary studies as branches of knowledge;^{[177][178][179]} Conrad Celtes, the first and foremost German cartographic writer and «the greatest lyric genius and certainly the greatest organizer and popularizer of German Humanism»;^{[180][181][182][183]} Athanasius Kircher, described by Fletcher as «a founder figure of various disciplines—of geology (certainly vulcanology), musicology (as a surveyor of musical forms), museum curatorship, Coptology, to name a few—and might be claimed today as the first theorist of gravity and a long-term originator of the moving pictures (with his magic lantern shows). Through his many enthusiasms, moreover, he was the conduit of others’ pursuits in the rapidly widening horizon of knowledge that marks the later Renaissance.»;^[184] and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the greatest, if not the greatest «Universal genius», of all times.^[185][186]

Cartography developed strongly, with the center being Nuremberg, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann’s Universalis Cosmographia and the 1513 edition of Geography marked the climax of a cartography revolution.^[187][188] The emperor himself dabbled in cartography.^[189]

In 1515, Johannes Stabius (court astronomer under Maximilian I), Albrecht Dürer and the astronomer Konrad Heinfogel produced the first planispheres of both southern and northerns hemispheres, also the first printed celestial maps. These maps prompted the revival of interest in the field of uranometry throughout Europe.^{[190][191][192][193]}

Astronomer Johannes Kepler from Weil der Stadt was one of the pioneering minds of empirical and rational research. Through rigorous application of the principles of the Scientific method he construed his laws of planetary motion. His ideas influenced contemporary Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and provided fundamental mechanical principles for Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.^[194]

Colonies[edit]

German Colonies in the Americas existed because the Free Imperial Cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg got colonial rights in the Province of Venezuela or North of South America in return for debts owed by the Holy Roman Empire Charles V, who was also King of Spain. In 1528, Charles V issued a charter by which the Welser family possessed the rights to explore, rule and colonize the area, also with the motivation of searching for the legendary golden city of El Dorado.^[195] Their principal colony was Klein-Venedig. A never realized colonial project was Hanauish-Indies intended by Friedrich Casimir, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg as a fief of the Dutch West India Company. The project failed due to a lack of funds and the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War in 1672.

1648–1815[edit]

Rise of Prussia[edit]

Frederick William, ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia since 1640 and later called the Great Elector, acquired East Pomerania via the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. He reorganized his loose and scattered territories and managed to throw off the vassalage of Prussia under the Kingdom of Poland during the Second Northern War.^[196] In order to address the demographic problem of Prussia’s largely rural population of about three million, he attracted the immigration and settlement of French Huguenots in urban areas. Many became craftsmen and entrepreneurs.^[197] King Frederick William I, known as the Soldier King, who reigned from 1713 to 1740, established the structures for the highly centralized Prussian state and raised a professional army, that was to play a central role.^[198] He also successfully operated a command economy that some historians consider mercantilist.^[199][200]

The total population of Germany (in its 1914 territorial extent) grew from 16 million in 1700 to 17 million in 1750 and reached 24 million in 1800. The 18th-century economy noticeably profited from widespread practical application of the Scientific method as greater yields and a more reliable agricultural production and the introduction of hygienic standards positively affected the birth rate – death rate balance.^[201]

Wars[edit]

Louis XIV of France waged a series of successful wars in order to extend the French territory. He occupied Lorraine (1670) and annexed the remainder of Alsace (1678–1681) that included the free imperial city of Straßburg. At the start of the Nine Years’ War, he also invaded the Electorate of the Palatinate (1688–1697).^[202] Louis established a number of courts whose sole function was to reinterpret historic decrees and treaties, the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) in particular in favor of his policies of conquest. He considered the conclusions of these courts, the Chambres de réunion as sufficient justification for his boundless annexations. Louis’ forces operated inside the Holy Roman Empire largely unopposed, because all available imperial contingents fought in Austria in the Great Turkish War. The Grand Alliance of 1689 took up arms against France and countered any further military advances of Louis. The conflict ended in 1697 as both parties agreed to peace talks after either side had realized, that a total victory was financially unattainable. The Treaty of Ryswick provided for the return of the Lorraine and Luxembourg to the empire and the abandoning of French claims to the Palatinate.^[203]

After the last-minute relief of Vienna from a siege and the imminent seizure by a Turkish force in 1683, the combined troops of the Holy League, that had been founded the following year, embarked on the military containment of the Ottoman Empire and reconquered Hungary in 1687.^[204] The Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of Venice and since 1686 Russia had joined the league under the leadership of Pope Innocent XI. Prince Eugene of Savoy, who served under emperor Leopold I, took supreme command in 1697 and decisively defeated the Ottomans in a series of spectacular battles and
manoeuvres. The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz marked the end of the Great Turkish War and Prince Eugene continued his service for the Habsburg monarchy as president of the War Council. He effectively ended Turkish rule over most of the territorial states in the Balkans during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–18. The Treaty of Passarowitz left Austria to freely establish royal domains in Serbia and the Banat and maintain hegemony in Southeast Europe, on which the future Austrian Empire was based.^[205][206]

Enlightened absolutism[edit]

Frederick II «the Great» is best known for his military genius and unique utilisation of the highly organized army to make Prussia one of the great powers in Europe as well as escaping from almost certain national disaster at the last minute. He was also an artist, author and philosopher, who conceived and promoted the concept of enlightened absolutism.^[207][208]

Austrian empress Maria Theresa succeeded in bringing about a favorable conclusion for her in the 1740 to 1748 war for recognition of her succession to the throne. However, Silesia was permanently lost to Prussia as a consequence of the Silesian Wars and the Seven Years’ War. The 1763 Treaty of Hubertusburg ruled that Austria and Saxony had to relinquish all claims to Silesia. Prussia, that had nearly doubled its territory was eventually recognized as a great European power with the consequence that the politics of the following century were fundamentally influenced by German dualism, the rivalry of Austria and Prussia for supremacy in Central Europe.^[209]

The concept of enlightened absolutism, although rejected by the nobility and citizenry, was advocated in Prussia and Austria and implemented since 1763. Prussian king Frederick II defended the idea in an essay and argued that the benevolent monarch simply is the first servant of the state, who effects his absolute political power for the benefit of the population as a whole. A number of legal reforms (e.g. the abolition of torture and the emancipation of the rural population and the Jews), the reorganization of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the introduction of compulsory education for boys and girls and promotion of religious tolerance, among others, caused rapid social and economic development.^[210]

During 1772 to 1795 Prussia instigated the partitions of Poland by occupying the western territories of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Austria and Russia resolved to acquire the remaining lands with the effect that Poland ceased to exist as a sovereign state until 1918.^[211]

Smaller states[edit]

The smaller German states were overshadowed by Prussia and Austria. Bavaria had a rural economy. Saxony was in economically good shape, although numerous wars had taken their toll. During the time when Prussia rose rapidly within Germany, Saxony was distracted by foreign affairs. The House of Wettin concentrated on acquiring and then holding on to the Polish throne which was ultimately unsuccessful.^{[212][clarification needed]}

Many of the smaller states of Germany were run by bishops, who in reality were from powerful noble families and showed scant interest in religion. While none of the later ecclesial rulers reached the outstanding reputation of Mainz’ Johann Philipp von Schönborn or Münster’s Christoph Bernhard von Galen, some of them promoted Enlightenment like the benevolent and progressive Franz Ludwig von Erthal in Würzburg and Bamberg.^[213]

In Hesse-Kassel, the Landgrave Frederick II, ruled from 1760 to 1785 as an enlightened despot, and raised money by renting soldiers (called «Hessians») to Great Britain to help fight the American Revolutionary War. He combined Enlightenment ideas with Christian values, cameralist plans for central control of the economy, and a militaristic approach toward diplomacy.^[214]

Hanover did not have to support a lavish court—its rulers were also kings of England and resided in London. George III, elector (ruler) from 1760 to 1820, never once visited Hanover. The local nobility who ran the country opened the University of Göttingen in 1737; it soon became a world-class intellectual center. Baden sported perhaps the best government of the smaller states. Karl Friedrich ruled well for 73 years (1738–1811) and was an enthusiast for the Enlightenment; he abolished serfdom in 1783.^[215]

The smaller states failed to form coalitions with each other, and were eventually overwhelmed by Prussia who swallowed up many of them between 1807 and 1871.^[216]

[edit]

Prussia underwent major social change between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries as the nobility declined as the traditional aristocracy struggled to compete with the rising merchant class,^[217] which developed into a new Bourgeoisie middle class,^{[218][219][220]} while the emancipation of the serfs granted the rural peasantry land purchasing rights and freedom of movement,^[221] and a series of agrarian reforms in northwestern Germany abolished feudal obligations and divided up feudal land, giving rise to wealthier peasants and paved the way for a more efficient rural economy.^[222]

Enlightenment[edit]

Since the mid-18th century recognition and application of Enlightenment ideas, higher cultural, intellectual and spiritual standards have led to higher quality works of art in music, philosophy, science and literature. Philosopher Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was a pioneering author on a near universal number of Enlightenment rationality topics in Germany and established German as the language of philosophic reasoning, scholarly instruction and research.^[223]

In 1685, Margrave Frederick William of Prussia issued the Edict of Potsdam within a week after French king Louis XIV’s Edict of Fontainebleau, that decreed the abolishment of the 1598 concession to free religious practice for Protestants. Frederick William offered his co-religionists, who are oppressed and assailed for the sake of the Holy Gospel and its pure doctrine…a secure and free refuge in all Our Lands.^[224] Around 20,000 Huguenot refugees arrived in an immediate wave and settled in the cities, 40% in Berlin, the ducal residence alone. The French Lyceum in Berlin was established in 1689 and the French language had by the end of the 17th century replaced Latin to be spoken universally in international diplomacy. The nobility and the educated middle-class of Prussia and the various German states increasingly used the French language in public conversation in combination with universal cultivated manners. Like no other German state, Prussia had access to and the skill set for the application of pan-European Enlightenment ideas to develop more rational political and administrative institutions.^[225] The princes of Saxony carried out a comprehensive series of fundamental fiscal, administrative, judicial, educational, cultural and general economic reforms. The reforms were aided by the country’s strong urban structure and influential commercial groups, who modernized pre-1789 Saxony along the lines of classic Enlightenment principles.^[226]

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) broke new ground in philosophy and poetry, as a leader of the Sturm und Drang movement of proto-Romanticism. Weimar Classicism («Weimarer Klassik») was a cultural and literary movement based in Weimar that sought to establish a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, classical, and Enlightenment ideas. The movement, from 1772 until 1805, involved Herder as well as polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), a poet and historian. Herder argued that every folk had its own particular identity, which was expressed in its language and culture. This legitimized the promotion of German language and culture and helped shape the development of German nationalism. Schiller’s plays expressed the restless spirit of his generation, depicting the hero’s struggle against social pressures and the force of destiny.^[227]

German music, sponsored by the upper classes, came of age under composers Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791).^[228]

Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom, and political authority. Kant’s work contained basic tensions that would continue to shape German thought – and indeed all of European philosophy – well into the 20th century.^[229][230] The ideas of the Enlightenment and their implementation received general approval and recognition as principal cause for widespread cultural progress.^[231]

French Revolution, 1789–1815[edit]

German reaction to the French Revolution was mixed at first. German intellectuals celebrated the outbreak, hoping to see the triumph of Reason and The Enlightenment. The royal courts in Vienna and Berlin denounced the overthrow of the king and the threatened spread of notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By 1793, the execution of the French king and the onset of the Terror disillusioned the Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle classes). Reformers said the solution was to have faith in the ability of Germans to reform their laws and institutions in peaceful fashion.^[232]

Europe was racked by two decades of war revolving around France’s efforts to spread its revolutionary ideals, and the opposition of reactionary royalty. War broke out in 1792 as Austria and Prussia invaded France, but were defeated at the Battle of Valmy (1792). The German lands saw armies marching back and forth, bringing devastation (albeit on a far lower scale than the Thirty Years’ War, almost two centuries before), but also bringing new ideas of liberty and civil rights for the people. Prussia and Austria ended their failed wars with France but (with Russia) partitioned Poland among themselves in 1793 and 1795.

French consulate suzereignity[edit]

France took control of the Rhineland, imposed French-style reforms, abolished feudalism, established constitutions, promoted freedom of religion, emancipated Jews, opened the bureaucracy to ordinary citizens of talent, and forced the nobility to share power with the rising middle class. Napoleon created the Kingdom of Westphalia (1807–1813) as a model state.^[233] These reforms proved largely permanent and modernized the western parts of Germany. When the French tried to impose the French language, German opposition grew in intensity. A Second Coalition of Britain, Russia, and Austria then attacked France but failed. Napoleon established direct or indirect control over most of western Europe, including the German states apart from Prussia and Austria. The old Holy Roman Empire was little more than a farce; Napoleon simply abolished it in 1806 while forming new countries under his control. In Germany Napoleon set up the «Confederation of the Rhine», comprising most of the German states except Prussia and Austria.^[234]

Imperial French suzereignity[edit]

Under Frederick William II’s weak rule (1786—1797) Prussia had undergone a serious economic, political and military decline. His successor king Frederick William III tried to remain neutral during the War of the Third Coalition and French emperor Napoleon’s dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and reorganisation of the German principalities. Induced by the queen and a pro-war party Frederick William joined the Fourth Coalition in October 1806. Napoleon easily defeated the Prussian army at the Battle of Jena and occupied Berlin. Prussia lost its recently acquired territories in western Germany, its army was reduced to 42,000 men, no trade with Britain was allowed and Berlin had to pay Paris high reparations and fund the French army of occupation. Saxony changed sides to support Napoleon and joined the Confederation of the Rhine. Ruler Frederick Augustus I was rewarded with the title of king and given a part of Poland taken from Prussia, which became known as the Duchy of Warsaw.^[235]

After Napoleon’s military fiasco in Russia in 1812, Prussia allied with Russia in the Sixth Coalition. A series of battles followed and Austria joined the alliance. Napoleon was decisively defeated in the Battle of Leipzig in late 1813. The German states of the Confederation of the Rhine defected to the Coalition against Napoleon, who rejected any peace terms. Coalition forces invaded France in early 1814, Paris fell and in April Napoleon surrendered. Prussia as one of the winners at the Congress of Vienna, gained extensive territory.^[201]

1815–1871[edit]

Overview[edit]

In 1815, continental Europe was in a state of overall turbulence and exhaustion, as a consequence of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The liberal spirit of the Enlightenment and Revolutionary era diverged toward Romanticism.^[236] The victorious members of the Coalition had negotiated a new peaceful balance of powers in Vienna and agreed to maintain a stable German heartland that keeps French imperialism at bay. However, the idea of reforming the defunct Holy Roman Empire was discarded. Napoleon’s reorganization of the German states was continued and the remaining princes were allowed to keep their titles. In 1813, in return for guarantees from the Allies that the sovereignty and integrity of the Southern German states (Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria) would be preserved, they broke with France.^[237]

German Confederation[edit]

During the 1815 Congress of Vienna the 39 former states of the Confederation of the Rhine joined the German Confederation, a loose agreement for mutual defense. Attempts of economic integration and customs coordination were frustrated by repressive anti-national policies. Great Britain approved of the union, convinced that a stable, peaceful entity in central Europe could discourage aggressive moves by France or Russia. Most historians, however, concluded, that the Confederation was weak and ineffective and an obstacle to German nationalism. The union was undermined by the creation of the Zollverein in 1834, the 1848 revolutions, the rivalry between Prussia and Austria and was finally dissolved in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866,^[238] to be replaced by the North German Confederation during the same year.^[238]

Society and economy[edit]

Increasingly after 1815, a centralized Prussian government based in Berlin took over the powers of the nobles, which in terms of control over the peasantry had been almost absolute. To help the nobility avoid indebtedness, Berlin set up a credit institution to provide capital loans in 1809, and extended the loan network to peasants in 1849. When the German Empire was established in 1871, the Junker nobility controlled the army and the navy, the bureaucracy, and the royal court; they generally set governmental policies.^[239]

Population[edit]

Between 1815 and 1865 the population of the German Confederation (excluding Austria) grew around 60% from 21 million to 34 million.^[240] Simultaneously the Demographic Transition took place as the high birth rates and high death rates of the pre-industrial country shifted to low birth and death rates of the fast-growing industrialized urban economic and agricultural system. Increased agricultural productivity secured a steady food supply, as famines and epidemics declined. This allowed people to marry earlier, and have more children. The high birthrate was offset by a very high rate of infant mortality and after 1840, large-scale emigration to the United States. Emigration totaled at 480,000 in the 1840s, 1,200,000 in the 1850s, and at 780,000 in the 1860s. The upper and middle classes first practiced birth control, soon to be universally adopted.^[241]

Industrialization[edit]

In 1800, Germany’s social structure was poorly suited to entrepreneurship or economic development. Domination by France during the French Revolution (1790s to 1815), however, produced important institutional reforms, that included the abolition of feudal restrictions on the sale of large landed estates, the reduction of the power of the guilds in the cities, and the introduction of a new, more efficient commercial law. The idea, that these reforms were beneficial for Industrialization has been contested.^[242] Nevertheless, traditionalism remained strong in the many small principalities. Until 1850, the guilds, the landed aristocracy, the churches and the government bureaucracies maintained many rules and restrictions that held entrepreneurship in low esteem and given little opportunity to develop. From the 1830s and 1840s, Prussia, Saxony and other states introduced agriculture based on sugar beets, turnips and potatoes, that yielded higher crops, which enabled a surplus rural population to move to industrial areas.

In the early 19th century the Industrial Revolution was in full swing in Britain, France, and Belgium. The various small federal states in Germany developed only slowly and independently as competition was strong. Early investments for the railway network during the 1830s came almost exclusively from private hands. Without a central regulatory agency the construction projects were quickly realized. Actual industrialization only took off after 1850 in the wake of the railroad construction.^[243] The textile industry grew rapidly, profiting from the elimination of tariff barriers by the Zollverein.^[244] During the second half of the 19th century the German industry grew exponentially and by 1900, Germany was an industrial world leader along with Britain and the United States.^[245]

Historian Thomas Nipperdey remarks:

On the whole, industrialisation in Germany must be considered to have been positive in its effects. Not only did it change society and the countryside, and finally the world…it created the modern world we live in. It solved the problems of population growth, under-employment and pauperism in a stagnating economy, and abolished dependency on the natural conditions of agriculture, and finally hunger. It created huge improvements in production and both short- and long-term improvements in living standards. However, in terms of social inequality, it can be assumed that it did not change the relative levels of income. Between 1815 and 1873 the statistical distribution of wealth was on the order of 77% to 23% for entrepreneurs and workers respectively. On the other hand, new problems arose, in the form of interrupted growth and new crises, such as urbanisation, «alienation», new underclasses, proletariat and proletarian misery, new injustices and new masters and, eventually, class warfare.^[246]</ref>

Urbanization[edit]

In 1800, the population was predominantly rural, as only 10% lived in communities of 5,000 or more people, and only 2% lived in cities of more than 100,000 people. After 1815, the urban population grew rapidly, due to the influx of young people from the rural areas. Berlin grew from 172,000 in 1800, to 826,000 inhabitants in 1870, Hamburg from 130,000 to 290,000, Munich from 40,000 to 269,000 and Dresden from 60,000 to 177,000.^[247]

Railways[edit]

The takeoff stage of economic development came with the railroad revolution in the 1840s, which opened up new markets for local products, created a pool of middle managers, increased the demand for engineers, architects and skilled machinists and stimulated investments in coal and iron. Political disunity of three dozen states and a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the 1830s. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines did link the major cities; each German state was responsible for the lines within its own borders. Economist Friedrich List summed up the advantages to be derived from the development of the railway system in 1841:

• 1. As a means of national defence, it facilitates the concentration, distribution and direction of the army.
• 2. It is a means to the improvement of the culture of the nation. It brings talent, knowledge and skill of every kind readily to market.
• 3. It secures the community against dearth and famine, and against excessive fluctuation in the prices of the necessaries of life.
• 4. It promotes the spirit of the nation, as it has a tendency to destroy the Philistine spirit arising from isolation and provincial prejudice and vanity. It binds nations by ligaments, and promotes an interchange of food and of commodities, thus making it feel to be a unit. The iron rails become a nerve system, which, on the one hand, strengthens public opinion, and, on the other hand, strengthens the power of the state for police and governmental purposes.^[248]

Lacking a technological base at first, engineering and hardware was imported from Britain. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as 1890, their engineering was inferior to Britain. However, German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was the support of industrialisation. Eventually numerous lines criss-crossed the Ruhr area and other industrial centers and provided good connections to the major ports of Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, 9,400 locomotives pulled 43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight a day.^[243]

Newspapers and magazines[edit]

While there existed no national newspaper the many states issued a great variety of printed media, although they rarely exceeded regional significance. In a typical town existed one or two outlets, urban centers, such as Berlin and Leipzig had dozens. The audience was limited to a few percent of male adults, chiefly from the aristocratic and upper middle class. Liberal publishers outnumbered conservative ones by a wide margin. Foreign governments bribed editors to guarantee a favorable image.^[249] Censorship was strict, and the imperial government issued the political news that was supposed to be published. After 1871, strict press laws were enforced by Bismarck to contain the Socialists and hostile editors. Editors focused on political commentary, culture, the arts, high culture and the popular serialized novels. Magazines were politically more influential and attracted intellectual authors.^[250]

Science and culture during the 18th and 19th century[edit]

19th-century artists and intellectuals were greatly inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution and the great poets and writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). The Sturm und Drang romantic movement was embraced and emotion was given free expression in reaction to the perceived rationalism of the Enlightenment. Philosophical principles and methods were revolutionized by Immanuel Kant’s paradigm shift. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was the most influential composer of the period from classical to Romantic music. His use of tonal architecture in such a way as to allow significant expansion of musical forms and structures was immediately recognized as bringing a new dimension to music. His later piano music and string quartets, especially, showed the way to a completely unexplored musical universe, and influenced Franz Schubert (1797–1828) and Robert Schumann (1810–1856). In opera, a new Romantic atmosphere combining supernatural terror and melodramatic plot in a folkloric context was first successfully achieved by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) and perfected by Richard Wagner (1813–1883) in his Ring Cycle. The Brothers Grimm (1785–1863 & 1786–1859) collected folk stories into the popular Grimm’s Fairy Tales and are ranked among the founding fathers of German studies, who initiated the work on the Deutsches Wörterbuch («The German Dictionary»), the most comprehensive work on the German language.^[251]

University professors developed international reputations, especially in the humanities led by history and philology, which brought a new historical perspective to the study of political history, theology, philosophy, language, and literature. With Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Max Weber (1864–1920), Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) in philosophy, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) in theology and Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) in history became famous. The University of Berlin, founded in 1810, became the world’s leading university. Von Ranke, for example, professionalized history and set the world standard for historiography. By the 1830s mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology had emerged with world class science, led by Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) in natural science and Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) in mathematics. Young intellectuals often turned to politics, but their support for the failed revolution of 1848 forced many into exile.^[201]

18th- and 19th-century German artists, scientists and philosophers

Religion[edit]

Two main developments reshaped religion in Germany. Across the land, there was a movement to unite the larger Lutheran and the smaller Reformed Protestant churches. The churches themselves brought this about in Baden, Nassau, and Bavaria. However, in Prussia King Frederick William III was determined to handle unification entirely on his own terms, without consultation. His goal was to unify the Protestant churches, and to impose a single standardized liturgy, organization and even architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches. In a series of proclamations over several decades the Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together the more numerous Lutherans, and the less numerous Reformed Protestants. The government of Prussia now had full control over church affairs, with the king himself recognized as the leading bishop. Opposition to unification came from the «Old Lutherans» in Silesia who clung tightly to the theological and liturgical forms they had followed since the days of Luther. The government attempted to crack down on them, so they went underground. Tens of thousands migrated, to South Australia, and especially to the United States, where they formed the Missouri Synod, which is still in operation as a conservative denomination. Finally in 1845 a new king Frederick William IV offered a general amnesty and allowed the Old Lutherans to form a separate church association with only nominal government control.^{[252][253][254]}

From the religious point of view of the typical Catholic or Protestant, major changes were underway in terms of a much more personalized religiosity that focused on the individual more than the church or the ceremony. The rationalism of the late 19th century faded away, and there was a new emphasis on the psychology and feeling of the individual, especially in terms of contemplating sinfulness, redemption, and the mysteries and the revelations of Christianity. Pietistic revivals were common among Protestants. Among, Catholics there was a sharp increase in popular pilgrimages. In 1844 alone, half a million pilgrims made a pilgrimage to the city of Trier in the Rhineland to view the Seamless robe of Jesus, said to be the robe that Jesus wore on the way to his crucifixion. Catholic bishops in Germany had historically been largely independent of Rome, but now the Vatican exerted increasing control, a new «ultramontanism» of Catholics highly loyal to Rome.^[255] A sharp controversy broke out in 1837–38 in the largely Catholic Rhineland over the religious education of children of mixed marriages, where the mother was Catholic and the father Protestant. The government passed laws to require that these children always be raised as Protestants, contrary to Napoleonic law that had previously prevailed and allowed the parents to make the decision. It put the Catholic Archbishop under house arrest. In 1840, the new King Frederick William IV sought reconciliation and ended the controversy by agreeing to most of the Catholic demands. However Catholic memories remained deep and led to a sense that Catholics always needed to stick together in the face of an untrustworthy government.^[256]

Politics of restoration and revolution[edit]

After Napoleon[edit]

After the fall of Napoleon, Europe’s statesmen convened in Vienna in 1815 for the reorganisation of European affairs, under the leadership of the Austrian Prince Metternich. The political principles agreed upon at this Congress of Vienna included the restoration, legitimacy and solidarity of rulers for the repression of revolutionary and nationalist ideas.

The German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund) was founded, a loose union of 39 states (35 ruling princes and 4 free cities) under Austrian leadership, with a Federal Diet (German: Bundestag) meeting in Frankfurt am Main. It was a loose coalition that failed to satisfy most nationalists. The member states largely went their own way, and Austria had its own interests.

In 1819, a student radical assassinated the reactionary playwright August von Kotzebue, who had scoffed at liberal student organisations. In one of the few major actions of the German Confederation, Prince Metternich called a conference that issued the repressive Carlsbad Decrees, designed to suppress liberal agitation against the conservative governments of the German states.^[257] The Decrees terminated the fast-fading nationalist fraternities (German: Burschenschaften), removed liberal university professors, and expanded the censorship of the press. The decrees began the «persecution of the demagogues», which was directed against individuals who were accused of spreading revolutionary and nationalist ideas. Among the persecuted were the poet Ernst Moritz Arndt, the publisher Johann Joseph Görres and the «Father of Gymnastics» Ludwig Jahn.^[258]

In 1834, the Zollverein was established, a customs union between Prussia and most other German states, but excluding Austria. As industrialisation developed, the need for a unified German state with a uniform currency, legal system, and government became more and more obvious.

1848[edit]

Growing discontent with the political and social order imposed by the Congress of Vienna led to the outbreak, in 1848, of the March Revolution in the German states. In May the German National Assembly (the Frankfurt Parliament) met in Frankfurt to draw up a national German constitution.

But the 1848 revolution turned out to be unsuccessful: King Frederick William IV of Prussia refused the imperial crown, the Frankfurt parliament was dissolved, the ruling princes repressed the risings by military force, and the German Confederation was re-established by 1850. Many leaders went into exile, including a number who went to the United States and became a political force there.^[259]

1850s[edit]

The 1850s were a period of extreme political reaction. Dissent was vigorously suppressed, and many Germans emigrated to America following the collapse of the 1848 uprisings. Frederick William IV became extremely depressed and melancholic during this period, and was surrounded by men who advocated clericalism and absolute divine monarchy. The Prussian people once again lost interest in politics. Prussia not only expanded its territory but began to industrialize rapidly, while maintaining a strong agricultural base.

Bismarck takes charge (1862–1866)[edit]

In 1857, the Prussian king Frederick William IV suffered a stroke and his brother William served as regent until 1861 when he became King William I. Although conservative, William was very pragmatic. His most significant accomplishment was the naming of Otto von Bismarck as Prussian minister president in 1862. The cooperation of Bismarck, Defense Minister Albrecht von Roon, and Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke set the stage for the military victories over Denmark, Austria, and France, that led to the unification of Germany.^[260][261]

In 1863–64, disputes between Prussia and Denmark over Schleswig escalated, which was not part of the German Confederation, and which Danish nationalists wanted to incorporate into the Danish kingdom. The conflict led to the Second War of Schleswig in 1864. Prussia, joined by Austria, easily defeated Denmark and occupied Jutland. The Danes were forced to cede both the Duchy of Schleswig and the Duchy of Holstein to Austria and Prussia. The subsequent management of the two duchies led to tensions between Austria and Prussia. Austria wanted the duchies to become an independent entity within the German Confederation, while Prussia intended to annex them. The disagreement served as a pretext for the Seven Weeks War between Austria and Prussia, that broke out in June 1866. In July, the two armies clashed at Sadowa-Königgrätz (Bohemia) in an enormous battle involving half a million men. Prussian superior logistics and the modern breech-loading needle guns superiority over the slow muzzle-loading rifles of the Austrians, proved to be elementary for Prussia’s victory. The battle had also decided the struggle for hegemony in Germany and Bismarck was deliberately lenient with defeated Austria, that was to play only a subordinate role in future German affairs.^[262][263]

North German Confederation, 1866–1871[edit]

After the Seven Weeks War, the German Confederation was dissolved and the North German Federation (German Norddeutscher Bund) was established under the leadership of Prussia. Austria was excluded and its immense influence over Germany finally came to an end. The North German Federation was a transitional organisation that existed from 1867 to 1871, between the dissolution of the German Confederation and the founding of the German Empire.^[264]

German Empire, 1871–1918[edit]

Overview[edit]

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck determined the political course of the German Empire until 1890. He fostered alliances in Europe to contain France on the one hand and aspired to consolidate Germany’s influence in Europe on the other. His principal domestic policies focused on the suppression of socialism and the reduction of the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church on its adherents. He issued a series of anti-socialist laws in accord with a set of social laws, that included universal health care, pension plans and other social security programs. His Kulturkampf policies were vehemently resisted by Catholics, who organized political opposition in the Center Party (Zentrum). German industrial and economic power had grown to match Britain by 1900.

In 1888, the young and ambitious Kaiser Wilhelm II became emperor. He rejected advice from experienced politicians and ordered Bismarck’s resignation in 1890. He opposed Bismarck’s careful and delicate foreign policy and was determined to pursue colonialist policies, as Britain and France had been doing for centuries. The Kaiser promoted the active colonization of Africa and Asia for the lands that were not already colonies of other European powers. The Kaiser took a mostly unilateral approach in Europe only allied with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and embarked on a dangerous naval arms race with Britain. His aggressive and erroneous policies greatly contributed to the situation in which the assassination of the Austrian-Hungarian crown prince would spark off World War I.

Bismarck era[edit]

Bismarck was the dominant personality not just in Germany but in all of Europe and indeed the entire diplomatic world 1870–1890, but historians continue to debate his personality. Lothar Gall and Ernst Engelberg consider Bismarck was a future-oriented modernizer. In sharp contrast, Jonathan Steinberg decided he was basically a traditional Prussian whose highest priorities were to reinforce the monarchy, the Army, and the social and economic dominance of his own Junker class, thereby being responsible for a tragic history after his removal in 1890.^[265]

The new empire[edit]

In 1868, the Spanish queen Isabella II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution, leaving the country’s throne vacant. When Prussia suggested the Hohenzollern candidate, Prince Leopold as successor, France vehemently objected. The matter evolved into a diplomatic scandal and in July 1870, France resolved to end it in a full-scale war. The conflict was quickly decided as Prussia, joined by forces of a pan-German alliance never gave up the tactical initiative. A series of victories in north-eastern France followed and another French army group was simultaneously encircled at Metz. A few weeks later, the French army contingent under Emperor Napoleon III’s personal command was finally forced to capitulate in the fortress of Sedan.^[266][267] Napoleon was taken prisoner and a provisional government hastily proclaimed in Paris. The new government resolved to fight on and tried to reorganize the remaining armies while the Germans settled down to besiege Paris. The starving city surrendered in January 1871 and Jules Favre signed the surrender at Versailles. France was forced to pay indemnities of 5 billion francs and cede Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. This conclusion left the French national psyche deeply humiliated and further aggravated the French–German enmity.

During the Siege of Paris, the German princes assembled in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles on 18 January 1871 and announced the establishment of the German Empire and proclaimed the Prussian King Wilhelm I as German Emperor. The act unified all ethnic German states with the exception of Austria in the Little German solution of a federal economic, political and administrative unit. Bismarck, was appointed to serve as Chancellor.

A federal empire[edit]

The new empire was a federal union of 25 states that varied considerably in size, demography, constitution, economy, culture, religion and socio-political development. However, even Prussia itself, which accounted for two-thirds of the territory as well as of the population, had emerged from the empire’s periphery as a newcomer. It also faced colossal cultural and economic internal divisions. The Prussian provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland for example had been under French control during the previous decades. The local people, who had benefited from the liberal, civil reforms, that were derived from the ideas of the French Revolution, had only little in common with predominantly rural communities in authoritarian and disjointed Junker estates of Pommerania.^[268]
The inhabitants of the smaller territorial lands, especially in central and southern Germany greatly rejected the Prussianized concept of the nation and preferred to associate such terms with their individual home state. The Hanseatic port cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck ranked among the most ferocious opponents of the so-called contract with Prussia. As advocates of free trade, they objected to Prussian ideas of economic integration and refused to sign the renewed Zollverein (Custom Union) treaties until 1888.^[269] The Hanseatic merchants’ overseas economic success corresponded with their globalist mindset. The citizen of Hamburg, whom Bismark characterized as extremely irritating and the German ambassador in London as the worst Germans we have, were particularly appalled by Prussian militarism and its unopposed growing influence.^{[270][unreliable source?]}

The Prusso-German authorities were aware of necessary integration concepts as the results and the 52% voter turnout of the first imperial elections had clearly demonstrated. Historians increasingly argue, that the nation-state was forged through empire.^[271] National identity was expressed in bombastic imperial stone iconography and was to be achieved as an imperial people, with an emperor as head of state and it was to develop imperial ambitions – domestic, European and global.^[272][271]

Bismarck’s domestic policies as Chancellor of Germany were based on his effort to universally adopt the idea of the Protestant Prussian state and achieve the clear separation of church and state in all imperial principalities. In the Kulturkampf (lit.: culture struggle) from 1871 to 1878, he tried to minimize the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and its political arm, the Catholic Centre Party, via secularization of all education and introduction of civil marriage, but without success. The Kulturkampf antagonised many Protestants as well as Catholics and was eventually abandoned. The millions of non-German imperial subjects, like the Polish, Danish and French minorities, were left with no choice but to endure discrimination or accept^[273][274] the policies of Germanisation.

A three class system[edit]

• Aristocracy

The new Empire provided attractive top level career opportunities for the national nobility in the various branches of the consular and civil services and the army. As a consequence the aristocratic near total control of the civil sector guaranteed a dominant voice in the decision making in the universities and the churches. The 1914 German diplomatic corps consisted of 8 princes, 29 counts, 20 barons, 54 representants of the lower nobility and a mere 11 commoners. These commoners were indiscriminately recruited from elite industrialist and banking families. The consular corps employed numerous commoners, that however, occupied positions of little to no executive power.^[275] The Prussian tradition to reserve the highest military ranks for young aristocrats was adopted and the new constitution put all military affairs under the direct control of the Emperor and beyond control of the Reichstag.^[276] With its large corps of reserve officers across Germany, the military strengthened its role as «The estate which upheld the nation», and historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler added: «it became an almost separate, self-perpetuating caste».^[277]

Power increasingly was centralized among the 7000 aristocrats, who resided in the national capital of Berlin and neighboring Potsdam. Berlin’s rapidly increasing rich middle-class copied the aristocracy and tried to marry into it. A peerage could permanently boost a rich industrial family into the upper reaches of the establishment.^[278] However, the process tended to work in the other direction as the nobility became industrialists. For example, 221 of the 243 mines in Silesia were owned by nobles or by the King of Prussia himself.^[279]

• Middle class

The middle class in the cities grew exponentially, although it never acquired the powerful parliamentary representation and legislative rights as in France, Britain or the United States. The Association of German Women’s Organizations or BDF was established in 1894 to encompass the proliferating women’s organizations that had emerged since the 1860s. From the beginning the BDF was a bourgeois organization, its members working toward equality with men in such areas as education, financial opportunities, and political life. Working-class women were not welcome and were organized by the Socialists.^[280]

• Working class

The rise of the Socialist Workers’ Party (later known as the Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD), aimed to peacefully establish a socialist order through the transformation of the existing political and social conditions. From 1878, Bismarck tried to oppose the growing social democratic movement by outlawing the party’s organisation, its assemblies and most of its newspapers. Nonetheless, the Social Democrats grew stronger and Bismarck initiated his social welfare program in 1883 in order to appease the working class.^[281]

Bismarck built on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as the 1840s. In the 1880s he introduced old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care, and unemployment insurance that formed the basis of the modern European welfare state. His paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist.^[282][283] Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade.^[284][285]

Kulturkampf[edit]

Bismarck would not tolerate any power outside Germany—as in Rome—having a say in domestic affairs. He launched the Kulturkampf («culture war») against the power of the pope and the Catholic Church in 1873, but only in the state of Prussia. This gained strong support from German liberals, who saw the Catholic Church as the bastion of reaction and their greatest enemy. The Catholic element, in turn, saw in the National-Liberals the worst enemy and formed the Center Party.^[286]

Catholics, although nearly a third of the national population, were seldom allowed to hold major positions in the Imperial government, or the Prussian government. After 1871, there was a systematic purge of the remaining Catholics; in the powerful interior ministry, which handled all police affairs, the only Catholic was a messenger boy. Jews were likewise heavily discriminated against.^[287][288]

Most of the Kulturkampf was fought out in Prussia, but Imperial Germany passed the Pulpit Law which made it a crime for any cleric to discuss public issues in a way that displeased the government. Nearly all Catholic bishops, clergy, and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws and defiantly faced the increasingly heavy penalties and imprisonments imposed by Bismarck’s government. Historian Anthony Steinhoff reports the casualty totals:

As of 1878, only three of eight Prussian dioceses still had bishops, some 1,125 of 4,600 parishes were vacant, and nearly 1,800 priests ended up in jail or in exile … Finally, between 1872 and 1878, numerous Catholic newspapers were confiscated, Catholic associations and assemblies were dissolved, and Catholic civil servants were dismissed merely on the pretence of having Ultramontane sympathies.^[289]

Bismarck underestimated the resolve of the Catholic Church and did not foresee the extremes that this struggle would attain.^[290][291] The Catholic Church denounced the harsh new laws as anti-Catholic and mustered the support of its rank and file voters across Germany. In the following elections, the Center Party won a quarter of the seats in the Imperial Diet.^[292] The conflict ended after 1879 because Pope Pius IX died in 1878 and Bismarck broke with the Liberals to put his main emphasis on tariffs, foreign policy, and attacking socialists. Bismarck negotiated with the conciliatory new pope Leo XIII.^[293] Peace was restored, the bishops returned and the jailed clerics were released. Laws were toned down or taken back (Mitigation Laws 1880–1883 and Peace Laws 1886/87), but the laws concerning education, civil registry of marriages and religious disaffiliation remained in place. The Center Party gained strength and became an ally of Bismarck, especially when he attacked socialism.^[294]

Historians have cited the campaign against the Catholic church, as well as a similar campaign against the Social Democratic Party, as leaving a lasting influence on the German consciousness, whereby national unity can be encouraged by excluding or persecuting a minority. This strategy, later referred to as «negative integration», set a tone of either being loyal to the government or an enemy of the state, which directly influenced German nationalist sentiment and the later Nazi movement.^[295]

Foreign policies and relations[edit]

Chancellor Bismarck’s imperial foreign policy basically aimed at security and the prevention of a Franco-Russian alliance, in order to avoid a likely Two-front war. The League of Three Emperors was signed in 1873 by Russia, Austria, and Germany. It stated that republicanism and socialism were common enemies and that the three powers would discuss any matters concerning foreign policy. Bismarck needed good relations with Russia in order to keep France isolated. Russia fought a victorious war against the Ottoman Empire from 1877 to 1878 and attempted to establish the Principality of Bulgaria, that was strongly opposed by France and Britain in particular, as they were long concerned with the preservation of the Ottoman Empire and Russian containment at the Bosphorus Strait and the Black Sea. Germany hosted the Congress of Berlin in 1878, where a more moderate peace settlement was agreed upon.

In 1879, Germany formed the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, an agreement of mutual military assistance in the case of an attack from Russia, which was not satisfied with the agreement of the Congress of Berlin. The establishment of the Dual Alliance led Russia to take a more conciliatory stance and in 1887, the so-called Reinsurance Treaty was signed between Germany and Russia. In it, the two powers agreed on mutual military support in the case that France attacked Germany or an Austrian attack on Russia. Russia turned its attention eastward to Asia and remained largely inactive in European politics for the next 25 years. In 1882, Italy, seeking supporters for its interests in North Africa against France’s colonial policy, joined the Dual Alliance, which became the Triple Alliance. In return for German and Austrian support, Italy committed itself to assisting Germany in the case of a French attack.^[296]

Bismarck had always argued that the acquisition of overseas colonies was impractical and the burden of administration and maintenance would outweigh the benefits. Eventually, Bismarck gave way, and a number of colonies were established in Africa (Togo, the Cameroons, German South-West Africa, and German East Africa) and in Oceania (German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Marshall Islands). Consequently, Bismarck initiated the Berlin Conference of 1885, a formal meeting of the European colonial powers, who sought to «established international guidelines for the acquisition of African territory» (see Colonisation of Africa). Its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the formalisation of the «Scramble for Africa» and «New Imperialism».^[297]

Wilhelminian Era (1888–1918)[edit]

Wilhelm II[edit]

Emperor William I died in 1888. His son Frederick III, open for a more liberal political course, reigned only for ninety-nine days, as he was stricken with throat cancer and died three months after his coronation. His son Wilhelm II followed him on the throne at the age of 29. Wilhelm rejected the liberal ideas of his parents and embarked on a conservative autocratic rule. He early on decided to replace the political elite and in March 1890 he forced chancellor Bismarck into retirement.^[298] Following his principle of «Personal Regiment», Wilhelm was determined to exercise maximum influence on all government affairs.^{[299][300][301]}

Alliances and diplomacy[edit]

The young Kaiser Wilhelm set out to apply his imperialist ideas of Weltpolitik (German: [ˈvɛltpoliˌtiːk], «world politics»), as he envisaged a gratuitously aggressive political course to increase the empire’s influence in and control over the world. After the removal of Bismarck, foreign policies were tackled with by the Kaiser and the Federal Foreign Office under Friedrich von Holstein. Wilhelm’s increasingly erratic and reckless conduct was unmistakably related to character deficits and the lack of diplomatic skills.^[302][303] The foreign office’s rather sketchy assessment of the current situation and its recommendations for the empire’s most suitable course of action were:

First a long-term coalition between France and Russia had to fall apart, secondly, Russia and Britain would never get together, and finally, Britain would eventually seek an alliance with Germany.

Subsequently, Wilhelm refused to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. Russia promptly formed a closer relationship with France in the Dual Alliance of 1894, as both countries were concerned about the novel disagreeability of Germany. Furthermore, Anglo–German relations provided, from a British point of view, no basis for any consensus as the Kaiser refused to divert from his, although somewhat peculiarly desperate and anachronistic, aggressive imperial engagement and the naval arms race in particular. Von Holstein’s analysis proved to be mistaken on every point, Wilhelm, however, failed too, as he did not adopt a nuanced political dialogue. Germany was left gradually isolated and dependent on the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary, and Italy. This agreement was hampered by differences between Austria and Italy and in 1915 Italy left the alliance.^[234]

In 1897, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, state secretary of the German Imperial Naval Office devised his initially rather practical, yet nonetheless ambitious plan to build a sizeable naval force. Although basically posing only an indirect threat as a Fleet in being, Tirpitz theorized, that its mere existence would force Great Britain, dependent on unrestricted movement on the seas, to agree to diplomatic compromises.^[304] Tirpitz started the program of warship construction in 1898 and enjoyed the full support of Kaiser Wilhelm. Wilhelm entertained less rational ideas on the fleet, that circled around his romantic childhood dream to have a «fleet of [his] own some day» and his obsessive adherence to direct his policies along the line of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s work The Influence of Sea Power upon History.^[305] In exchange for the eastern African island of Zanzibar, Germany had bargained the island of Heligoland in the German Bight with Britain in 1890, and converted the island into a naval base and installed immense coastal defense batteries. Britain considered the imperial German endeavours to be a dangerous infringement on the century-old delicate balance of global affairs and trade on the seas under British control. The British, however, resolved to keep up the naval arms race and introduced the highly advanced new Dreadnought battleship concept in 1907. Germany quickly adopted the concept and by 1910 the arms race again escalated.^[306][307]

In the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905, Germany nearly clashed with Britain and France when the latter attempted to establish a protectorate over Morocco. Kaiser Wilhelm II was upset at having not been informed about French intentions, and declared their support for Moroccan independence. William II made a highly provocative speech regarding this. The following year, a conference was held in which all of the European powers except Austria-Hungary (by now little more than a German satellite) sided with France. A compromise was brokered by the United States where the French relinquished some, but not all, control over Morocco.^[308]

The Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911 saw another dispute over Morocco erupt when France tried to suppress a revolt there. Germany, still smarting from the previous quarrel, agreed to a settlement whereby the French ceded some territory in central Africa in exchange for Germany’s renouncing any right to intervene in Moroccan affairs. This confirmed French control over Morocco, which became a full protectorate of that country in 1912.^[309]

Economy[edit]

By 1890, the economy continued to industrialize and grow on an even higher rate than during the previous two decades and increased dramatically in the years leading up to World War I. Growth rates for the individual branches and sectors often varied considerably, and periodical figures provided by the Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt («Imperial Statistical Bureau) are often disputed or just assessments. Classification and naming of internationally traded commodities and exported goods was still in progress and the structure of production and export had changed during four decades. Published documents provide numbers such as: The proportion of goods manufactured by the modern industry was approximately 25% in 1900, while the proportion of consumer related products in manufactured exports stood at 40%.^[310] Reasonably exact are the figures for the entire industrial production between 1870 and 1914, which increased about 500%.^[311]

Historian J. A. Perkins argued that more important than Bismarck’s new tariff on imported grain was the introduction of the sugar beet as a main crop. Farmers quickly abandoned traditional, inefficient practices in favor of modern methods, including the use of artificial fertilizers and mechanical tools. Intensive methodical farming of sugar and other root crops made Germany the most efficient agricultural producer in Europe by 1914. Even so, farms were usually small in size and women did much of the field work. An unintended consequence was the increased dependence on migratory, especially foreign, labor.^[312][313]

The basics of the modern chemical research laboratory layout and the introduction of essential equipment and instruments such as Bunsen burners, the Petri dish, the Erlenmeyer flask, task-oriented working principles and team research originated in 19th-century Germany and France. The organisation of knowledge acquisition was further refined by laboratory integration in research institutes of the universities and the industries. Germany acquired the leading role in the world’s Chemical industry by the late 19th century through strictly organized methodology. In 1913, the German Chemical industry produced almost 90 percent of the global supply of dyestuffs and sold about 80 percent of its production abroad.^[314][315]

Germany became Europe’s leading steel-producing nation in the 1890s, thanks in large part to the protection from American and British competition afforded by tariffs and cartels.^[316] The leading firm was «Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp», run by the Krupp family.^[317] The merger of several major firms into the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel Works) in 1926 was modeled on the U.S. Steel corporation in the United States. The new company emphasized rationalization of management structures and modernization of the technology; it employed a multi-divisional structure and used return on investment as its measure of success. By 1913, American and German exports dominated the world steel market, as Britain slipped to third place.^[318]

In machinery, iron and steel, and other industries, German firms avoided cut-throat competition and instead relied on trade associations. Germany was a world leader because of its prevailing «corporatist mentality», its strong bureaucratic tradition, and the encouragement of the government. These associations regulate competition and allowed small firms to function in the shadow of much larger companies.^[319]

Colonies[edit]

By the 1890s, German colonial expansion in Asia and the Pacific (Kiauchau in China, the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, Samoa) led to frictions with Britain, Russia, Japan and the United States.^[320] The construction of the Baghdad Railway, financed by German banks, was designed to eventually connect Germany with the Turkish Empire and the Persian Gulf, but it also collided with British and Russian geopolitical interests.^[321]

The largest colonial enterprises were in Africa.^[322] The harsh treatment of the Nama and Herero in what is now Namibia in Africa in 1906–07 led to charges of genocide against the Germans. Historians are examining the links and precedents between the Herero and Namaqua Genocide and the Holocaust of the 1940s.^{[323][324][325]}

Other claimed territories of the German Colonial Empire are: Bear Island (occupied in 1899),^[326] Togo-Hinterlands,^[327] German Somali Coast,^[328] Katanga Territories, Pondoland (failed attempt by Emil Nagel [de]),^[329] Nyassaland (Mozambique), Southwestern Madagascar,^[330] Santa Lucia Bay (South Africa) (failed attempt in 1884),^[331] and the Farasan Islands.^[332]

World War I[edit]

Causes[edit]

Ethnic demands for nation states upset the balance between the empires that dominated Europe, leading to World War I, which started in August 1914. Germany stood behind its ally Austria in a confrontation with Serbia, but Serbia was under the protection of Russia, which was allied to France. Germany was the leader of the Central Powers, which included Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and later Bulgaria; arrayed against them were the Allies, consisting chiefly of Russia, France, Britain, and in 1915 Italy.

In explaining why neutral Britain went to war with Germany, author Paul M. Kennedy recognized it was critical for war that Germany become economically more powerful than Britain, but he downplays the disputes over economic trade imperialism, the Baghdad Railway, confrontations in Central and Eastern Europe, high-charged political rhetoric and domestic pressure-groups. Germany’s reliance time and again on sheer power, while Britain increasingly appealed to moral sensibilities, played a role, especially in seeing the invasion of Belgium as a necessary military tactic or a profound moral crime. The German invasion of Belgium was not important because the British decision had already been made and the British were more concerned with the fate of France. Kennedy argues that by far the main reason was London’s fear that a repeat of 1870 – when Prussia and the German states smashed France – would mean that Germany, with a powerful army and navy, would control the English Channel and northwest France. British policy makers insisted that would be a catastrophe for British security.^[333]

Western Front[edit]

In the west, Germany sought a quick victory by encircling Paris using the Schlieffen Plan. But it failed due to Belgian resistance, Berlin’s diversion of troops, and very stiff French resistance on the Marne, north of Paris. The Western Front became an extremely bloody battleground of trench warfare. The stalemate lasted from 1914 until early 1918, with ferocious battles that moved forces a few hundred yards at best along a line that stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss border. The British imposed a tight naval blockade in the North Sea which lasted until 1919, sharply reducing Germany’s overseas access to raw materials and foodstuffs. Food scarcity became a serious problem by 1917.^[334] The United States joined with the Allies in April 1917. The entry of the United States into the war – following Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare – marked a decisive turning-point against Germany.^[335]

Total casualties on the Western Front were 3,528,610 killed and 7,745,920 wounded.^[336]

Eastern Front[edit]

More wide open was the fighting on the Eastern Front. In the east, there were decisive victories against the Russian army, the trapping and defeat of large parts of the Russian contingent at the Battle of Tannenberg, followed by huge Austrian and German successes. The breakdown of Russian forces – exacerbated by internal turmoil caused by the 1917 Russian Revolution – led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks were forced to sign on 3 March 1918 as Russia withdrew from the war. It gave Germany control of Eastern Europe. Spencer Tucker says, «The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator.»^[337] When Germany later complained that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was too harsh on them, the Allies responded that it was more benign than Brest-Litovsk.^[338]

1918[edit]

By defeating Russia in 1917, Germany was able to bring hundreds of thousands of combat troops from the east to the Western Front, giving it a numerical advantage over the Allies. By retraining the soldiers in new storm-trooper tactics, the Germans expected to unfreeze the Battlefield and win a decisive victory before the American army arrived in strength.^[339] However, the spring offensives all failed, as the Allies fell back and regrouped, and the Germans lacked the reserves necessary to consolidate their gains. In the summer, with the Americans arriving at 10,000 a day, and the German reserves exhausted, it was only a matter of time before multiple Allied offenses destroyed the German army.^[340]

Homefront[edit]

Although war was not expected in 1914, Germany rapidly mobilized its civilian economy for the war effort, the economy was handicapped by the British blockade that cut off food supplies.^[341]

Steadily conditions deteriorated rapidly on the home front, with severe food shortages reported in all urban areas. Causes involved the transfer of many farmers and food workers into the military, an overburdened railroad system, shortages of coal, and especially the British blockade that cut off imports from abroad. The winter of 1916–1917 was known as the «turnip winter», because that vegetable, usually fed to livestock, was used by people as a substitute for potatoes and meat, which were increasingly scarce. Thousands of soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry people, who grumbled that the farmers were keeping the food for themselves. Even the army had to cut the rations for soldiers.^[342] Morale of both civilians and soldiers continued to sink. According to historian William H. MacNeil:

By 1917, after three years of war, the various groups and bureaucratic hierarchies which had been operating more or less independently of one another in peacetime (and not infrequently had worked at cross purposes) were subordinated to one (and perhaps the most effective) of their number: the General Staff. Military officers controlled civilian government officials, the staffs of banks, cartels, firms, and factories, engineers and scientists, workingmen, farmers-indeed almost every element in German society; and all efforts were directed in theory and in large degree also in practice to forwarding the war effort.^[343]

1918 was the year of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic which struck hard at a population weakened by years of malnutrition.

Revolution 1918[edit]

The end of October 1918, in Wilhelmshaven, in northern Germany, saw the beginning of the German Revolution of 1918–19. Units of the German Navy refused to set sail for a last, large-scale operation in a war which they saw as good as lost, initiating the uprising. On 3 November, the revolt spread to other cities and states of the country, in many of which workers’ and soldiers’ councils were established. Meanwhile, Hindenburg and the senior commanders had lost confidence in the Kaiser and his government. The Kaiser and all German ruling princes abdicated. On 9 November 1918, the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a Republic.

On 11 November, the Compiègne armistice was signed, ending the war. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919. Germany was to cede Alsace-Lorraine to France. Eupen-Malmédy would temporarily be ceded to Belgium, with a plebiscite to be held to allow the people the choice of the territory either remaining with Belgium or being returned to German control. Following a plebiscite, the territory was allotted to Belgium on 20 September 1920. The future of North Schleswig was to be decided by plebiscite. In the Schleswig Plebiscites, the Danish-speaking population in the north voted for Denmark and the southern, German speaking populace, part voted for Germany. Schleswig was thus partitioned. Holstein remained German without a referendum. Memel was ceded to the Allied and Associated powers, to decide the future of the area. On 9 January 1923, Lithuanian forces invaded the territory. Following negotiations, on 8 May 1924, the League of Nations ratified the annexation on the grounds that Lithuania accepted the Memel Statute, a power-sharing arrangement to protect non-Lithuanians in the territory and its autonomous status. Until 1929, German-Lithuanian co-operation increased and this power sharing arrangement worked. Poland was restored and most of the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, and some areas of Upper Silesia were reincorporated into the reformed country after plebiscites and independence uprisings. All German colonies were to be handed over to League of Nations, who then assigned them as Mandates to Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. The new owners were required to act as a disinterested trustee over the region, promoting the welfare of its inhabitants in a variety of ways until they were able to govern themselves. The left and right banks of the Rhine were to be permanently demilitarised. The industrially important Saarland was to be governed by the League of Nations for 15 years and its coalfields administered by France. At the end of that time a plebiscite was to determine the Saar’s future status. To ensure execution of the treaty’s terms, Allied troops would occupy the left (German) bank of the Rhine for a period of 5–15 years. The German army was to be limited to 100,000 officers and men; the general staff was to be dissolved; vast quantities of war material were to be handed over and the manufacture of munitions rigidly curtailed. The navy was to be similarly reduced, and no military aircraft were allowed. Germany was also required to pay reparations for all civilian damage caused during the war.

Weimar Republic, 1919–1933[edit]

Overview[edit]

The humiliating peace terms in the Treaty of Versailles provoked bitter indignation throughout Germany, and seriously weakened the new democratic regime. In December 1918, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was founded, and in 1919 it tried and failed to overthrow the new republic. Adolf Hitler in 1919 took control of the new National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), which failed in a coup in Munich in 1923. Both parties, as well as parties supporting the republic, built militant auxiliaries that engaged in increasingly violent street battles. Electoral support for both parties increased after 1929 as the Great Depression hit the economy hard, producing many unemployed men who became available for the paramilitary units. The Nazis (NSDAP), with a mostly rural and lower middle class base, came to power by appearing to work within the Weimar constitution^[344] and ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.

The early years[edit]

On 11 August 1919, the Weimar constitution came into effect, with Friedrich Ebert as first President.

On 30 December 1918, the Communist Party of Germany was founded by the Spartacus League, who had split from the Social Democratic Party during the war. It was headed by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and rejected the parliamentary system. In 1920, about 300,000 members from the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany joined the party, transforming it into a mass organization. The Communist Party had a following of about 10% of the electorate.^[345]

In the first months of 1920, the Reichswehr was to be reduced to 100,000 men, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. This included the dissolution of many Freikorps – units made up of volunteers. In an attempt at a coup d’état in March 1920, the Kapp Putsch, extreme right-wing politician Wolfgang Kapp let Freikorps soldiers march on Berlin and proclaimed himself Chancellor of the Reich. After four days the coup d’état collapsed, due to popular opposition and lack of support by the civil servants and the officers. Other cities were shaken by strikes and rebellions, which were bloodily suppressed.

Germany was the first state to establish diplomatic relations with the new Soviet Union. Under the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany accorded the Soviet Union de jure recognition, and the two signatories mutually cancelled all pre-war debts and renounced war claims. For the next twenty years Russia and Germany would work together helping to re-establish a military build up in Germany, and assist Russia in creating an industrial power under the weight of centralised planning of Lenin’s communism.

When Germany defaulted on its reparation payments, French and Belgian troops occupied the heavily industrialised Ruhr district (January 1923). The German government encouraged the population of the Ruhr to passive resistance: shops would not sell goods to the foreign soldiers, coal-miners would not dig for the foreign troops, trams in which members of the occupation army had taken a seat would be left abandoned in the middle of the street. The passive resistance proved effective, insofar as the occupation became a loss-making deal for the French government. But the Ruhr fight also helped fuel hyperinflation,^[346] and many who lost all their fortune would become bitter enemies of the Weimar Republic and voters of the anti-democratic right. See 1920s German inflation.

In September 1923, the deteriorating economic conditions led Chancellor Gustav Stresemann to call an end to the passive resistance in the Ruhr. In November, his government introduced a new currency, the Rentenmark (later: Reichsmark), together with other measures to stop the hyperinflation. In the following six years the economic situation improved. In 1928, Germany’s industrial production even regained the pre-war levels of 1913.

The national elections of 1924 led to a swing to the right. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was elected President in 1925.

In October 1925, the Treaty of Locarno was signed by Germany, France, Belgium, Britain and Italy; it recognised Germany’s borders with France and Belgium. Moreover, Britain, Italy and Belgium undertook to assist France in the case that German troops marched into the demilitarised Rheinland. Locarno paved the way for Germany’s admission to the League of Nations in 1926.

Reparations[edit]

The actual amount of reparations that Germany was obliged to pay out was not the 132 billion marks decided in the London Schedule of 1921 but rather the 50 billion marks stipulated in the A and B Bonds. Historian Sally Marks says the «C bonds» were entirely chimerical—a device to fool the public into thinking Germany would pay much more. The actual total payout from 1920 to 1931 (when payments were suspended indefinitely) was 20 billion German gold marks, worth about US$5 billion or £1 billion stg. 12.5 billion was cash that came mostly from loans from New York bankers. The rest was goods like coal and chemicals, or from assets like railway equipment. The reparations bill was fixed in 1921 on the basis of a German capacity to pay, not on the basis of Allied claims. The highly publicized rhetoric of 1919 about paying for all the damages and all the veterans’ benefits was irrelevant for the total, but it did determine how the recipients spent their share. Germany owed reparations chiefly to France, Britain, Italy and Belgium; the US received $100 million.^[347]

Economic collapse and political problems, 1929–1933[edit]

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the beginning of the worldwide Great Depression, which hit Germany as hard as any nation. In July 1931, the Darmstätter und Nationalbank – one of the biggest German banks – failed. In early 1932, the number of unemployed had soared to more than 6,000,000.

On top of the collapsing economy came a political crisis: the proportional representation that the political system operated on meant that for every 60,000 votes a party received, it earned a seat in the Reichstag. This resulted in a disparate and myriad collection of minor parties that struggled to cooperate.^[348] The political parties represented in the Reichstag were unable to build a governing majority in the face of escalating extremism from both the far right (the Nazis, NSDAP) and the far left (Communist Party of Germany).^[349] In March 1930, President Hindenburg appointed Heinrich Brüning Chancellor, invoking article 48 of Weimar’s constitution, which allowed him to override the Parliament. To push through his package of austerity measures against a majority of Social Democrats, Communists and the NSDAP (Nazis), Brüning made use of emergency decrees and dissolved Parliament. In March and April 1932, Hindenburg was re-elected in the German presidential election of 1932.^[350]

The Nazi Party was the largest party in the national elections of 1932. On 31 July 1932 it received 37.3% of the votes, and in the election on 6 November 1932 it received less, but still the largest share, 33.1%, making it the biggest party in the Reichstag. The Communist KPD came third, with 15%.^[351] Together, the anti-democratic parties of the far right were now able to hold a considerable share of seats in Parliament, but they were at sword’s point with the political left, fighting it out in the streets. The Nazis were particularly successful among Protestants, among unemployed young voters, among the lower middle class in the cities and among the rural population. It was weakest in Catholic areas and in large cities. On 30 January 1933, pressured by former Chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservatives, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor.^[352]

Science and culture in 19th and 20th century[edit]

The Weimar years saw a flowering of German science and high culture, before the Nazi regime resulted in a decline in the scientific and cultural life in Germany and forced many renowned scientists and writers to flee.
German recipients dominated the Nobel prizes in science.^[353] Germany dominated the world of physics before 1933, led by Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn, Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg. Chemistry likewise was dominated by German professors and researchers at the great chemical companies such as BASF and Bayer and persons like Justus von Liebig, Fritz Haber and Emil Fischer. Theoretical mathematicians Georg Cantor in the 19th century and David Hilbert in the 20th century. Karl Benz, the inventor of the automobile, and Rudolf Diesel were pivotal figures of engineering, and Wernher von Braun, rocket engineer. Ferdinand Cohn, Robert Koch and Rudolph Virchow were three key figures in microbiology.

Among the most important German writers were Thomas Mann (1875–1955), Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) and Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). The reactionary historian Oswald Spengler wrote The Decline of the West (1918–23) on the inevitable decay of Western Civilization, and influenced intellectuals in Germany such as Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, and the Frankfurt School, as well as intellectuals around the world.^[354]

After 1933, Nazi proponents of «Aryan physics», led by the Nobel Prize-winners Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard, attacked Einstein’s theory of relativity as a degenerate example of Jewish materialism in the realm of science. Many scientists and humanists emigrated; Einstein moved permanently to the U.S. but some of the others returned after 1945.^[355][356]

19th and 20th century German authors, scientists and philosophers

Nazi Germany, 1933–1945[edit]

The Nazi regime restored economic prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy spending on the military, while suppressing labor unions and strikes. The return of prosperity gave the Nazi Party enormous popularity, with only minor, isolated and subsequently unsuccessful cases of resistance among the German population over the 12 years of rule. The Gestapo (secret police) under Heinrich Himmler destroyed the political opposition and persecuted the Jews, trying to force them into exile, while taking their property. The Party took control of the courts, local government, and all civic organizations except the Protestant and Catholic churches. All expressions of public opinion were controlled by Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler’s hypnotic speaking. The Nazi state idolized Hitler as its Führer (leader), putting all powers in his hands. Nazi propaganda centered on Hitler and was quite effective in creating what historians called the «Hitler Myth»—that Hitler was all-wise and that any mistakes or failures by others would be corrected when brought to his attention.^[357] In fact Hitler had a narrow range of interests and decision making was diffused among overlapping, feuding power centers; on some issues he was passive, simply assenting to pressures from whoever had his ear. All top officials reported to Hitler and followed his basic policies, but they had considerable autonomy on a daily basis.^[358]

Establishment of the Nazi regime[edit]

In order to secure a majority for his Nazi Party in the Reichstag, Hitler called for new elections. On the evening of 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set afire. Hitler swiftly blamed an alleged Communist uprising, and convinced President Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, which rescinded most German civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press. The decree allowed the police to detain people indefinitely without charges or a court order. Four thousand members of the Communist Party of Germany were arrested.^[359] Communist agitation was banned, but at this time not the Communist Party itself. Communists and Socialists were brought into hastily prepared Nazi concentration camps such as Kemna concentration camp, where they were at the mercy of the Gestapo, the newly established secret police force. Communist Reichstag deputies were taken into protective custody (despite their constitutional privileges).

Despite the terror and unprecedented propaganda, the last free General Elections of 5 March 1933, while resulting in 43.9% failed to give the majority for the NSDAP as Hitler had hoped. Together with the German National People’s Party (DNVP), however, he was able to form a slim majority government. On 23 March 1933, the Enabling Act, an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, passed in the Reichstag by a vote of 444 to 94,^[360] marking the beginning of Nazi Germany. To obtain the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill, accommodations were made to the Catholic Centre Party, and the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several Social Democratic deputies from attending, and the Communists deputies had already been banned.^[361] This amendment allowed Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws—even laws that violated the constitution—without the consent of the president or the Reichstag.^[362] The Enabling Act formed the basis for the dictatorship and the dissolution of the Länder; the trade unions and all political parties other than the Nazi Party were suppressed. A centralised totalitarian state was established, no longer based on the liberal Weimar constitution. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations shortly thereafter. The coalition parliament was rigged by defining the absence of arrested and murdered deputies as voluntary and therefore cause for their exclusion as wilful absentees. Subsequently, in July the Centre Party was voluntarily dissolved in a quid pro quo with the Pope under the anti-communist Pope Pius XI for the Reichskonkordat; and by these manoeuvres Hitler achieved movement of these Catholic voters into the Nazi Party, and a long-awaited international diplomatic acceptance of his regime. According to Professor Dick Geary the Nazis gained a larger share of their vote in Protestant areas than in Catholic areas, in the elections held between 1928 and November 1932.^[363] The Communist Party was proscribed in April 1933.

Thereafter, the Chief of Staff of the SA, Ernst Röhm, demanded more political and military power for him and his men, which caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler used the SS and Gestapo to purge the entire SA leadership—along with a number of Hitler’s political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher). It became known as the Night of the Long Knives and took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934.^[364] As a reward, the SS became an independent organisation under the command of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. He would rise to become Chief of German Police in June 1936 and already had control over the concentration camps system. Upon Hindenburg’s death on 2 August 1934, Hitler’s cabinet passed a law proclaiming the presidency to be vacant and transferred the role and powers of the head of state to Hitler as Chancellor and Führer (Leader).

Antisemitism and the Holocaust[edit]

The Nazi regime was particularly hostile towards Jews, who became the target of unending antisemitic propaganda attacks. The Nazis attempted to convince the German people to view and treat Jews as «subhumans»^[365] and immediately after winning almost 44% of parliamentary seats in the 1933 federal elections the Nazis imposed a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses. In March 1933 the first official Nazi concentration camp was established at Dachau in Bavaria^[366] and from 1933 to 1935 the Nazi regime consolidated their power. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service passed on 7 April 1933, which forced all Jewish civil servants to retire from the legal profession and the civil service.^[367] The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 banned sexual relations between Jews and Germans and only those of German or related blood were eligible to be considered citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights.^[368] This stripped Jews, Roma and others of their legal rights.^[369] Jews continued to suffer persecution under the Nazi regime, exemplified by the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938, and about half of Germany’s 500,000 Jews fled the country before 1939, after which escape became almost impossible.^[370]

In 1941, the Nazi leadership decided to implement a plan that they called the «Final Solution» which came to be known as the Holocaust. Under the plan, Jews and other «lesser races» along with political opponents from Germany as well as occupied countries were systematically murdered at murder sites, and starting in 1942, at extermination camps.^[371] Between 1941 and 1945 Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled and members of other groups were targeted and methodically murdered – the origin of the word «genocide». In total approximately 17 million people were killed during the Holocaust including 1.5 million Jewish children.^[372]

Military[edit]

In 1935, Hitler officially re-established the Luftwaffe (air force) and reintroduced universal military service. This was in breach of the Treaty of Versailles; Britain, France and Italy issued notes of protest. Hitler had the officers swear their personal allegiance to him.^[373] In 1936, German troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland.^[374] As the territory was part of Germany, the British and French governments did not feel that attempting to enforce the treaty was worth the risk of war.^[375] The move strengthened Hitler’s standing in Germany. His reputation swelled further with the 1936 Summer Olympics, which were held in the same year in Berlin, and proved another great propaganda success for the regime as orchestrated by master propagandist Joseph Goebbels.^[376]

Foreign policy[edit]

Hitler’s diplomatic strategy in the 1930s was to make seemingly reasonable demands, threatening war if they were not met. When opponents tried to appease him, he accepted the gains that were offered, then went to the next target. That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations (1933), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm (1935), won back the Saar (1935), remilitarized the Rhineland (1936), formed an alliance («axis») with Mussolini’s Italy (1936), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), annexed Austria (1938), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later and World War II in Europe began.^[377][378]

After establishing the «Rome-Berlin axis» with Benito Mussolini, and signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan – which was joined by Italy a year later in 1937 – Hitler felt able to take the offensive in foreign policy. On 12 March 1938, German troops marched into Austria, where an attempted Nazi coup had been unsuccessful in 1934. When Austrian-born Hitler entered Vienna, he was greeted by loud cheers. Four weeks later, 99% of Austrians voted in favour of the annexation (Anschluss) of their country to the German Reich. After Austria, Hitler turned to Czechoslovakia, where the 3.5 million-strong Sudeten German minority was demanding equal rights and self-government. At the Munich Conference of September 1938, Hitler, the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier agreed upon the cession of Sudeten territory to the German Reich by Czechoslovakia. Hitler thereupon declared that all of German Reich’s territorial claims had been fulfilled. However, hardly six months after the Munich Agreement, in March 1939, Hitler used the smoldering quarrel between Slovaks and Czechs as a pretext for taking over the rest of Czechoslovakia as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In the same month, he secured the return of Memel from Lithuania to Germany. Chamberlain was forced to acknowledge that his policy of appeasement towards Hitler had failed.

World War II[edit]

At first Germany was very successful in its military operations. In less than three months (April – June 1940), Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France. The unexpectedly swift defeat of France resulted in an upswing in Hitler’s popularity and an upsurge in war fever.^[379][380] Hitler made peace overtures to the new British leader Winston Churchill in July 1940, but Churchill remained dogged in his defiance. Churchill had major financial, military, and diplomatic help from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the U.S. Hitler’s bombing campaign against Britain (September 1940 – May 1941) failed. Some 43,000 British civilians were killed and 139,000 wounded in the Blitz; much of London was destroyed, with 1,400,245 buildings destroyed or damaged. Germany’s armed forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 – weeks behind schedule due to the invasion of Yugoslavia – but swept forward until they reached the gates of Moscow. Hitler had assembled more than 4,000,000 troops, including 1,000,000 from his Axis allies. The Soviets had lost nearly 3,000,000 killed in action, while 3,500,000 Soviet troops were captured in the first six months of the war. The Einsatzgruppen (Nazi mobile death squads) executed all Soviet Jews that it located, while the Germans went to Jewish households and forced the families into concentration camps for labor or to extermination camps for death.

The tide began to turn in December 1941, when the invasion of the Soviet Union hit determined resistance in the Battle of Moscow and Hitler declared war on the United States in the wake of the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. After surrender in North Africa and losing the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43, the Germans were forced into the defensive. By late 1944, the United States, Canada, France, and Great Britain were closing in on Germany in the West, while the Soviets were victoriously advancing in the East.

In 1944–45, Soviet forces completely or partially liberated Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Denmark, and Norway. Nazi Germany collapsed as Berlin was taken by the Soviet Union’s Red Army in a fight to the death on the city streets. 2,000,000 Soviet troops took part in the assault, and they faced 750,000 German troops. 78,000–305,000 Soviets were killed, while 325,000 German civilians and soldiers were killed.^[381] Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945. The final German Instrument of Surrender was signed on 8 May 1945, marking the end of Nazi Germany.

By September 1945, Nazi Germany and its Axis partners (mainly Italy and Japan) had all been defeated, chiefly by the forces of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. Much of Europe lay in ruins, over 60 million people worldwide had been killed (most of them civilians), including approximately 6 million Jews and 11 million non-Jews in what became known as the Holocaust. World War II resulted in the destruction of Germany’s political and economic infrastructure and led directly to its partition, considerable loss of territory (especially in the East), and historical legacy of guilt and shame.^[382]

Germany during the Cold War, 1945–1990[edit]

As a consequence of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the onset of the Cold War in 1947, the country’s territory was shrunk and split between the two global blocs in the East and West, a period known as the division of Germany. Millions of refugees from Central and Eastern Europe moved west, most of them to West Germany. Two countries emerged: West Germany was a parliamentary democracy, a NATO member, a founding member of what since became the European Union as one of the world’s largest economies and under allied military control until 1955,^[383] while East Germany was a totalitarian Communist dictatorship controlled by the Soviet Union as a satellite of Moscow. With the collapse of Communism in Europe in 1989, reunion on West Germany’s terms followed.

No one doubted Germany’s economic and engineering prowess; the question was how long bitter memories of the war would cause Europeans to distrust Germany, and whether Germany could demonstrate it had rejected totalitarianism and militarism and embraced democracy and human rights.^[384]

Expulsion[edit]

At the Potsdam Conference, Germany was divided into four military occupation zones by the Allies and did not regain independence until 1949. The provinces east of the Oder and Neisse rivers (the Oder-Neisse line) were transferred to Poland and Russia (Kaliningrad oblast), pending a final peace conference with Germany, which eventually never took place.^[385] Most of the remaining German population was expelled. Around 6.7 million Germans living in «west-shifted» Poland, mostly within previously German lands, and the 3 million in German-settled regions of Czechoslovakia were deported west.^[386]

Post-war chaos[edit]

The total of German war dead was 8% to 10% out of a prewar population of 69,000,000, or between 5.5 million and 7 million people. This included 4.5 million in the military, and between 1 and 2 million civilians. There was chaos as 11 million foreign workers and POWs left, while soldiers returned home and more than 14 million displaced German-speaking refugees from both the eastern provinces and East-Central and Eastern Europe were expelled from their native land and came to the western German lands, often foreign to them.^[387] During the Cold War, the West German government estimated a death toll of 2.2 million civilians due to the flight and expulsion of Germans and through forced labour in the Soviet Union.^[388][389] This figure remained unchallenged until the 1990s, when some historians put the death toll at 500,000–600,000 confirmed deaths.^[390] In 2006, the German government reaffirmed its position that 2.0–2.5 million deaths occurred.

Denazification removed, imprisoned, or executed most top officials of the old regime, but most middle and lower ranks of civilian officialdom were not seriously affected. In accordance with the Allied agreement made at the Yalta Conference, millions of POWs were used as forced labor by the Soviet Union and other European countries.^[391]

In the East, the Soviets crushed dissent and imposed another police state, often employing ex-Nazis in the dreaded Stasi. The Soviets extracted about 23% of the East German GNP for reparations, while in the West reparations were a minor factor.^[392]

In 1945–46 housing and food conditions were bad, as the disruption of transport, markets, and finances slowed a return to normal. In the West, bombing had destroyed the fourth of the housing stock,^[393] and over 10 million refugees from the east had crowded in, most living in camps.^[394] Food production in 1946–48 was only two-thirds of the prewar level, while grain and meat shipments – which usually supplied 25% of the food – no longer arrived from the East. Furthermore, the end of the war brought the end of large shipments of food seized from occupied nations that had sustained Germany during the war. Coal production was down 60%, which had cascading negative effects on railroads, heavy industry, and heating.^[395] Industrial production fell more than half and reached prewar levels only at the end of 1949.^[396]

Allied economic policy originally was one of industrial disarmament plus building the agricultural sector. In the western sectors, most of the industrial plants had minimal bomb damage and the Allies dismantled 5% of the industrial plants for reparations.^[397]

However, deindustrialization became impractical and the U.S. instead called for a strong industrial base in Germany so it could stimulate European economic recovery.^[398] The U.S. shipped food in 1945–47 and made a $600 million loan in 1947 to rebuild German industry. By May 1946 the removal of machinery had ended, thanks to lobbying by the U.S. Army. The Truman administration finally realised that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously been dependent. Washington decided that an «orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany».^[399][400]

In 1945, the occupying powers took over all newspapers in Germany and purged them of Nazi influence. The American occupation headquarters, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) began its own newspaper based in Munich, Die Neue Zeitung. It was edited by German and Jewish émigrés who fled to the United States before the war. Its mission was to encourage democracy by exposing Germans to how American culture operated. The paper was filled with details on American sports, politics, business, Hollywood, and fashions, as well as international affairs.^[401]

East Germany[edit]

In 1949, the western half of the Soviet zone became the «Deutsche Demokratische Republik» – «DDR» («German Democratic Republic» – «GDR», simply often «East Germany»), under control of the Socialist Unity Party. Neither country had a significant army until the 1950s, but East Germany built the Stasi into a powerful secret police that infiltrated every aspect of its society.^[402]

East Germany was an Eastern bloc state under political and military control of the Soviet Union through her occupation forces and the Warsaw Treaty. Political power was solely executed by leading members (Politburo) of the communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party (SED). A Soviet-style command economy was set up; later the GDR became the most advanced Comecon state. While East German propaganda was based on the benefits of the GDR’s social programs and the alleged constant threat of a West German invasion, many of her citizens looked to the West for political freedoms and economic prosperity.^[403]

Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973) was the party boss from 1950 to 1971. In 1933, Ulbricht had fled to Moscow, where he served as a Comintern agent loyal to Stalin. As World War II was ending, Stalin assigned him the job of designing the postwar German system that would centralize all power in the Communist Party. Ulbricht became deputy prime minister in 1949 and secretary (chief executive) of the Socialist Unity (Communist) party in 1950.^[404] Some 2.6 million people had fled East Germany by 1961 when he built the Berlin Wall to stop them – shooting those who attempted it. What the GDR called the «Anti-Fascist Protective Wall» was a major embarrassment for the program during the Cold War, but it did stabilize East Germany and postpone its collapse.^[405][406] Ulbricht lost power in 1971, but was kept on as a nominal head of state. He was replaced because he failed to solve growing national crises, such as the worsening economy in 1969–70, the fear of another popular uprising as had occurred in 1953, and the disgruntlement between Moscow and Berlin caused by Ulbricht’s détente policies toward the West.

The transition to Erich Honecker (General Secretary from 1971 to 1989) led to a change in the direction of national policy and efforts by the Politburo to pay closer attention to the grievances of the proletariat. Honecker’s plans were not successful, however, with the dissent growing among East Germany’s population.

In 1989, the socialist regime collapsed after 40 years, despite its omnipresent secret police, the Stasi. The main reasons for its collapse included severe economic problems and growing emigration towards the West.

East Germany’s culture was shaped by Communism and particularly Stalinism. It was characterized by East German psychoanalyst Hans-Joachim Maaz in 1990 as having produced a «Congested Feeling» among Germans in the East as a result of Communist policies criminalizing personal expression that deviates from government approved ideals, and through the enforcement of Communist principals by physical force and intellectual repression by government agencies, particularly the Stasi.^[407] Critics of the East German state have claimed that the state’s commitment to communism was a hollow and cynical tool of a ruling elite. This argument has been challenged by some scholars who claim that the Party was committed to the advance of scientific knowledge, economic development, and social progress. However, the vast majority regarded the state’s Communist ideals to be nothing more than a deceptive method for government control.^[407]

According to German historian Jürgen Kocka (2010):

Conceptualizing the GDR as a dictatorship has become widely accepted, while the meaning of the concept dictatorship varies. Massive evidence has been collected that proves the repressive, undemocratic, illiberal, nonpluralistic character of the GDR regime and its ruling party.^[408]

West Germany (Bonn Republic)[edit]

In 1949, the three western occupation zones (American, British, and French) were combined into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany). The government was formed under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his conservative CDU/CSU coalition.^[409] The CDU/CSU was in power during most of the period since 1949. The capital was Bonn until it was moved to Berlin in 1990. In 1990, FRG absorbed East Germany and gained full sovereignty over Berlin. At all points West Germany was much larger and richer than East Germany, which became a dictatorship under the control of the Communist Party and was closely monitored by Moscow. Germany, especially Berlin, was a cockpit of the Cold War, with NATO and the Warsaw Pact assembling major military forces in west and east. However, there was never any combat.^[410]

Economic miracle[edit]

West Germany enjoyed prolonged economic growth beginning in the early 1950s (Wirtschaftswunder or «Economic Miracle»).^[411] Industrial production doubled from 1950 to 1957, and gross national product grew at a rate of 9 or 10% per year, providing the engine for economic growth of all of Western Europe. Labor unions supported the new policies with postponed wage increases, minimized strikes, support for technological modernization, and a policy of co-determination (Mitbestimmung), which involved a satisfactory grievance resolution system as well as requiring representation of workers on the boards of large corporations.^[412] The recovery was accelerated by the currency reform of June 1948, U.S. gifts of $1.4 billion as part of the Marshall Plan, the breaking down of old trade barriers and traditional practices, and the opening of the global market.^[413] West Germany gained legitimacy and respect, as it shed the horrible reputation Germany had gained under the Nazis.

West Germany played a central role in the creation of European cooperation; it joined NATO in 1955 and was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1958.

Refugee settlements[edit]

To house the German-speakers expelled from all over Eastern Europe, quarters with cheap building were erected on the outskirts of all major and minor towns and villages of West Germany. Most often, these quarters are recognizable by the streets being named after towns of former Eastern Germany, Sudetenland, or other previously German-settled towns.

1948 currency reform[edit]

The most dramatic and successful policy event was the currency reform of 1948.^[414] Since the 1930s, prices and wages had been controlled, but money had been plentiful. That meant that people had accumulated large paper assets, and that official prices and wages did not reflect reality, as the black market dominated the economy and more than half of all transactions were taking place unofficially. On 21 June 1948, the Western Allies withdrew the old currency and replaced it with the new Deutsche Mark at the rate of 1 new per 10 old. This wiped out 90% of government and private debt, as well as private savings. Prices were decontrolled, and labor unions agreed to accept a 15% wage increase, despite the 25% rise in prices. The result was that prices of German export products held steady, while profits and earnings from exports soared and were poured back into the economy. The currency reforms were simultaneous with the $1.4 billion in Marshall Plan money coming in from the United States, which was used primarily for investment.

In addition, the Marshall Plan forced German companies, as well as those in all of Western Europe, to modernize their business practices and take account of the international market. Marshall Plan funding helped overcome bottlenecks in the surging economy caused by remaining controls (which were removed in 1949), and Marshall Plan business reforms opened up a greatly expanded market for German exports. Overnight, consumer goods appeared in the stores, because they could be sold for realistic prices, emphasizing to Germans that their economy had turned a corner.^[394]

The success of the currency reform angered the Soviets, who cut off all road, rail, and canal links between the western zones and West Berlin. This was the Berlin Blockade, which lasted from 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949. In response, the U.S. and Britain launched an airlift of food and coal and distributed the new currency in West Berlin as well. The city thereby became economically integrated into West Germany.^[415] Until the mid-1960s, it served as «America’s Berlin», symbolizing the United States’ commitment to defending its freedom, which John F. Kennedy underscored during his visit in June 1963.^[416]

Adenauer[edit]

Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) was the dominant leader in West Germany.^[417] He was the first chancellor (top official) of the FRG, 1949–63, and until his death was the founder and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a coalition of conservatives, ordoliberals, and adherents of Protestant and Catholic social teaching that dominated West Germany politics for most of its history. During his chancellorship, the West Germany economy grew quickly, and West Germany established friendly relations with France, participated in the emerging European Union, established the country’s armed forces (the Bundeswehr), and became a pillar of NATO as well as firm ally of the United States. Adenauer’s government also commenced the long process of reconciliation with the Jews and Israel after the Holocaust.^[418]

Erhard[edit]

Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) was in charge of economic policy as economics director for the British and American occupation zones and was Adenauer’s long-time economics minister. Erhard’s decision to lift many price controls in 1948 (despite opposition from both the social democratic opposition and Allied authorities), plus his advocacy of free markets, helped set the Federal Republic on its strong growth from wartime devastation.^[419] Norbert Walter, a former chief economist at Deutsche Bank, argues that «Germany owes its rapid economic advance after World War II to the system of the Social Market Economy, established by Ludwig Erhard.»^[420][421] Erhard was politically less successful when he served as the CDU Chancellor from 1963 until 1966. Erhard followed the concept of a social market economy, and was in close touch with professional economists. Erhard viewed the market itself as social and supported only a minimum of welfare legislation. However, Erhard suffered a series of decisive defeats in his effort to create a free, competitive economy in 1957; he had to compromise on such key issues as the anti-cartel legislation. Thereafter, the West German economy evolved into a conventional west European welfare state.^[422]

Meanwhile, in adopting the Godesberg Program in 1959, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) largely abandoned Marxism ideas and embraced the concept of the market economy and the welfare state. Instead it now sought to move beyond its old working class base to appeal the full spectrum of potential voters, including the middle class and professionals. Labor unions cooperated increasingly with industry, achieving labor representation on corporate boards and increases in wages and benefits.^[423]

Grand coalition[edit]

In 1966, Erhard lost support and Kurt Kiesinger (1904–1988) was elected as Chancellor by a new CDU/CSU-SPD alliance combining the two largest parties. Social democratic (SPD) leader Willy Brandt was Deputy Federal Chancellor and Foreign Minister. The Grand Coalition lasted 1966–69 and is best known for reducing tensions with the Soviet bloc nations and establishing diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Guest workers[edit]

With a booming economy short of unskilled workers, especially after the Berlin Wall cut off the steady flow of East Germans, the FRG negotiated migration agreements with Italy (1955), Spain (1960), Greece (1960), and Turkey (1961) that brought in hundreds of thousands of temporary guest workers, called Gastarbeiter. In 1968, the FRG signed a guest worker agreement with Yugoslavia that employed additional guest workers. Gastarbeiter were young men who were paid full-scale wages and benefits, but were expected to return home in a few years.^[424]

The agreement with Turkey ended in 1973 but few workers returned because there were few good jobs in Turkey.^[425] By 2010 there were about 4 million people of Turkish descent in Germany. The generation born in Germany attended German schools, but had a poor command of either German or Turkish, and had either low-skilled jobs or were unemployed.^[426][427]

Brandt and Ostpolitik[edit]

Willy Brandt (1913–1992) was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in 1964–87 and West German Chancellor in 1969–1974. Under his leadership, the German government sought to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union and improve relations with the German Democratic Republic, a policy known as the Ostpolitik.^[411] Relations between the two German states had been icy at best, with propaganda barrages in each direction. The heavy outflow of talent from East Germany prompted the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, which worsened Cold War tensions and prevented East Germans from travel. Although anxious to relieve serious hardships for divided families and to reduce friction, Brandt’s Ostpolitik was intent on holding to its concept of «two German states in one German nation».

Ostpolitik was opposed by the conservative elements in Germany, but won Brandt an international reputation and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.^[428] In September 1973, both West and East Germany were admitted to the United Nations. The two countries exchanged permanent representatives in 1974, and, in 1987, East Germany’s leader Erich Honecker paid an official state visit to West Germany.^[429]

Economic crisis of 1970s[edit]

After 1973, Germany was hard hit by a worldwide economic crisis, soaring oil prices, and stubbornly high unemployment, which jumped from 300,000 in 1973 to 1.1 million in 1975. The Ruhr region was hardest hit, as its easy-to-reach coal mines petered out, and expensive German coal was no longer competitive. Likewise the Ruhr steel industry went into sharp decline, as its prices were undercut by lower-cost suppliers such as Japan. The welfare system provided a safety net for the large number of unemployed workers, and many factories reduced their labor force and began to concentrate on high-profit specialty items. After 1990 the Ruhr moved into service industries and high technology. Cleaning up the heavy air and water pollution became a major industry in its own right. Meanwhile, formerly rural Bavaria became a high-tech center of industry.^[397]

A spy scandal forced Brandt to step down as Chancellor while remaining as party leader. He was replaced by Helmut Schmidt (b. 1918), of the SPD, who served as Chancellor in 1974–1982. Schmidt continued the Ostpolitik with less enthusiasm. He had a PhD in economics and was more interested in domestic issues, such as reducing inflation. The debt grew rapidly as he borrowed to cover the cost of the ever more expensive welfare state.^[430] After 1979, foreign policy issues grew central as the Cold War turned hot again. The German peace movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to protest against American deployment in Europe of new medium-range ballistic missiles. Schmidt supported the deployment but was opposed by the left wing of the SPD and by Brandt.

The pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) had been in coalition with the SPD, but now it changed direction.^[431] Led by Finance Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff (1926–2009) the FDP adopted the market-oriented «Kiel Theses» in 1977; it rejected the Keynesian emphasis on consumer demand, and proposed to reduce social welfare spending, and try to introduce policies to stimulate production and facilitate jobs. Lambsdorff argued that the result would be economic growth, which would itself solve both the social problems and the financial problems. As a consequence, the FDP switched allegiance to the CDU and Schmidt lost his parliamentary majority in 1982. For the only time in West Germany’s history, the government fell on a vote of no confidence.^[394][432]

Kohl[edit]

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) brought the conservatives back to power with a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition in 1982, and served as Chancellor until 1998.^[411] After repeated victories in 1983, 1987, 1990 and 1994 he was finally defeated by a landslide that was the biggest on record, for the left in the 1998 federal elections, and was succeeded as Chancellor by Gerhard Schröder of the SPD. Kohl is best known for orchestrating reunification with the approval of all the Four Powers from World War II, who still had a voice in German affairs.^[433]

Reunification[edit]

During the summer of 1989, rapid changes known as peaceful revolution or Die Wende took place in East Germany, which quickly led to German reunification.^[411] Growing numbers of East Germans emigrated to West Germany, many via Hungary after Hungary’s reformist government opened its borders.

The opening of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 then triggered a chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer a GDR and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. Otto von Habsburg’s idea developed the greatest mass exodus since the construction of the Berlin Wall and it was shown that the USSR and the rulers of the Eastern European satellite states were not ready to keep the Iron Curtain effective. This made their loss of power visible and clear that the GDR no longer received effective support from the other communist Eastern Bloc countries.^{[434][435][436]} Thousands of East Germans then tried to reach the West by staging sit-ins at West German diplomatic facilities in other East European capitals, most notably in Prague. The exodus generated demands within East Germany for political change, and mass demonstrations in several cities continued to grow.^[437]

Unable to stop the growing civil unrest, Erich Honecker was forced to resign in October, and on 9 November, East German authorities unexpectedly allowed East German citizens to enter West Berlin and West Germany. Hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity; new crossing points were opened in the Berlin Wall and along the border with West Germany. This led to the acceleration of the process of reforms in East Germany that ended with the dissolution of East Germany and the German reunification that came into force on 3 October 1990.^[438]

Federal Republic of Germany, 1990–present[edit]

Schröder[edit]

The SPD in coalition with the Greens won the elections of 1998. SPD leader Gerhard Schröder positioned himself as a centrist «Third Way» candidate in the mold of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United States President Bill Clinton.

Schröder, in March 2003, reversed his position and proposed a significant downsizing of the welfare state, known as Agenda 2010. He had enough support to overcome opposition from the trade unions and the SPD’s left wing. Agenda 2010 had five goals: tax cuts; labor market deregulation, especially relaxing rules protecting workers from dismissal and setting up Hartz concept job training; modernizing the welfare state by reducing entitlements; decreasing bureaucratic obstacles for small businesses; and providing new low-interest loans to local governments.^[439]

On 26 December 2004 during a Christmas holiday and Boxing Day celebration, several thousand Germans in Thailand and other parts across the region of South and Southeast Asia were affected by the catastrophic tsunami from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the Indonesian island’s west coast of Sumatra, and many thousands of German people died . A memorial service was held at Berlin Cathedral and Bundestag on 20 January 2005 on behalf of all Germans.

On 22 May 2005, after the SPD lost to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Gerhard Schröder announced he would call federal elections «as soon as possible». A motion of confidence was subsequently defeated in the Bundestag on 1 July 2005 by 151 to 296 (with 148 abstaining), after Schröder urged members not to vote for his government in order to trigger new elections. In response, a grouping of left-wing SPD dissidents and the neo-communist Party of Democratic Socialism agreed to run on a joint ticket in the general election, with Schröder’s rival Oskar Lafontaine leading the new group.

Merkel[edit]

In the 2005 elections, Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor. In 2009 the German government approved a €50 billion stimulus plan.^[440] Among the major German political projects of the early 21st century are the advancement of European integration, the energy transition (Energiewende) for a sustainable energy supply, the debt brake for balanced budgets, measures to increase the fertility rate (pronatalism), and high-tech strategies for the transition of the German economy, summarised as Industry 4.0.^[441]
From 2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2021, Germany was ruled by a grand coalition led by the CDU’s Angela Merkel as chancellor. From 2009 to 2013, Merkel headed a centre-right government of the CDU/CSU and FDP.^[442]

Together with France and other EU states, Germany has played the leading role in the European Union. Germany (especially under Chancellor Helmut Kohl) was one of the main supporters of admitting many East European countries to the EU. Germany is at the forefront of European states seeking to exploit the momentum of monetary union to advance the creation of a more unified and capable European political, defence and security apparatus. German Chancellor Schröder expressed an interest in a permanent seat for Germany in the UN Security Council, identifying France, Russia, and Japan as countries that explicitly backed Germany’s bid. Germany formally adopted the Euro on 1 January 1999 after permanently fixing the Deutsche Mark rate on 31 December 1998.^[443][444]

Since 1990, the German Bundeswehr has participated in a number of peacekeeping and disaster relief operations abroad. Since 2002, German troops formed part of the International Security Assistance Force in the war in Afghanistan, resulting in the first German casualties in combat missions since World War II.

In light of the worldwide Great Recession that began in 2008, Germany did not experience as much economic hardship as other European nations. Germany later sponsored a massive financial rescue in the wake of the Eurozone crisis which affected the German economy.

Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, German public opinion turned sharply against nuclear power in Germany, which at the time produced a fourth of the electricity supply. In response Merkel announced plans to close down the nuclear power plants over the following decade, and a commitment to rely more heavily on wind and other alternative energy sources, in addition to coal and natural gas.^[445]

Germany was affected by the European migrant crisis in 2015 as it became the final destination of choice for many asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East entering the EU. The country took in over a million refugees and migrants and developed a quota system which redistributed migrants around its federal states based on their tax income and existing population density.^[446] The decision by Merkel to authorize unrestricted entry led to heavy criticism in Germany as well as within Europe.^[447][448] This was a major factor in the rise of the far-right party Alternative for Germany which entered the Bundestag in the 2017 federal election.^[449]

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected German society with over 3 million confirmed cases and over 90,000 deaths. Following the first confirmed case in January 2020, the German government was commended for being an effective model for instituting methods of curbing infections and deaths, but lost this status by the end of the year due to a rising number of cases. Vaccines began to be administered in December 2020 and many restrictions were lifted by May 2021.^[450]

Scholz[edit]

In September 2021 Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) narrowly won the federal election, ending 16 years of conservative-led rule under Angela Merkel.^[451]

On 8 December 2021, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz was sworn in as Germany’s new chancellor. He formed a coalition government with the Green Party and the liberal Free Democrats.^[452]

In February 2022, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was elected for a second five-year term as Germany’s president. Although largely ceremonial post, he has been seen as a symbol of consensus and continuity.^[453]

After Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Germany’s previous foreign policy towards Russia (traditional Ostpolitik) has been severely criticized for having been too credulous and soft.^[454] Following concerns from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany announced a major shift in policy, pledging a €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr – to remedy years of underinvestment – along with raising the budget to above 2% GDP.^[455]

Historiography[edit]

Sonderweg debate[edit]

A major historiographical debate about the German history concerns the Sonderweg, the alleged «special path» that separated German history from the normal course of historical development, and whether or not Nazi Germany was the inevitable result of the Sonderweg. Proponents of the Sonderweg theory such as Fritz Fischer point to such events of the Revolution of 1848, the authoritarianism of the Second Empire and the continuation of the Imperial elite into the Weimar and Nazi periods. Opponents such as Gerhard Ritter of the Sonderweg theory argue that proponents of the theory are guilty of seeking selective examples, and there was much contingency and chance in German history. In addition, there was much debate within the supporters of the Sonderweg concept as for the reasons for the Sonderweg, and whether or not the Sonderweg ended in 1945. Was there a Sonderweg? Winkler says:

«For a long time, educated Germans answered it in the positive, initially by laying claim to a special German mission, then, after the collapse of 1945, by criticizing Germany’s deviation from the West. Today, the negative view is predominant. Germany did not, according to the now prevailing opinion, differ from the great European nations to an extent that would justify speaking of a ‘unique German path.’ And, in any case, no country on earth ever took what can be described as the ‘normal path.’»^[456]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

Citations[edit]

References[edit]

Encyclopedia[edit]

Journals[edit]

Atlas and maps[edit]

• Atlas of Germany Wikipedia maps; not copyright

Further reading[edit]

Surveys[edit]

• Biesinger, Joseph A. Germany: A reference guide from the Renaissance to the present (2006)
• Bithell, Jethro, ed. Germany: A Companion to German Studies (5th ed. 1955), 578pp; essays on German literature, music, philosophy, art and, especially, history.
• Bösch, Frank. Mass Media and Historical Change: Germany in International Perspective, 1400 to the Present (Berghahn, 2015). 212 pp. online review
• Buse, Dieter K. ed. Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture 1871–1990 (2 vol 1998)
• Detwiler, Donald S. Germany: A Short History (3rd ed. 1999) 341pp.
• Fulbrook, Mary (1990). A Concise History of Germany. Cambridge concise histories. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521-36836-0. This text has updated editions.
• Gall, Lothar. Milestones — Setbacks — Sidetracks: The Path to Parliamentary Democracy in Germany, Historical Exhibition in the Deutscher Dom in Berlin (2003), exhibit catalog; heavily illustrated, 420pp; political history since 1800
• Herbert, Ulrich. A History of Twentieth-Century Germany (2019) excerpt
• Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany (1959–64); vol 1: The Reformation; vol 2: 1648–1840; vol 3: 1840–1945; standard scholarly survey online
• Kitchen, Martin. A history of modern Germany, 1800–2000 (2006) online
• Maehl, William Harvey. Germany in Western Civilization (1979), 833pp; focus on politics and diplomacy
• Orlow, Dietrich. A history of modern Germany : 1871 to present (2002) online
• Ozment, Steven. A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (2005), focus on cultural history
• Raff, Diether. History of Germany from the Medieval Empire to the Present (1988) 507pp
• Reinhardt, Kurt F. Germany: 2000 Years (2 vols., 1961), stress on cultural topics
• Richie, Alexandra. Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (1998), 1168 pp by scholar; excerpt and text search; emphasis on 20th century
• Sagarra, Eda. A Social History of Germany 1648–1914 (1977, 2002 edition)
• Schulze, Hagen, and Deborah Lucas Schneider. Germany: A New History (2001)
• Smith, Helmut Walser, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011), 862 pp; 35 essays by specialists; Germany since 1760
• Smith, Helmut Walser (2020). Germany, a nation in its time : before, during, and after nationalism, 1500–2000 (First ed.). New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-87140-466-4. 608pp.
• Snyder, Louis, ed. Documents of German history (1958) online. 620pp; 167 primary sources in English translation
• Taylor, A.J.P. The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of German History since 1815. (2001). 280pp;
• Watson, Peter. The German Genius (2010). 992 pp covers many thinkers, writers, scientists etc. since 1750; ISBN 978-0-7432-8553-7
• Winkler, Heinrich August. Germany: The Long Road West (2 vol, 2006), since 1789; excerpt and text search vol 1
• Zabecki, David T., ed. Germany at War: 400 Years of Military History (4 vol. 2015)

Medieval[edit]

• Arnold, Benjamin. Medieval Germany, 500–1300: A Political Interpretation (1998)
• Arnold, Benjamin. Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change, c. 900–1300 (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Barraclough, Geoffrey. The Origins of Modern Germany (2d ed., 1947)
• Fuhrmann, Horst. Germany in the High Middle Ages: c. 1050–1200 (1986)
• Goffart, Walter A. (1988). The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton University Press. hdl:2027/heb.01027. ISBN 9780691055145.
• Haverkamp, Alfred, Helga Braun, and Richard Mortimer. Medieval Germany 1056–1273 (1992)
• Innes; Matthew. State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge U.P. 2000)
• Jeep, John M. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia (2001), 928pp, 650 articles by 200 scholars cover AD 500 to 1500
• Nicholas, David. The Northern Lands: Germanic Europe, c. 1270–c. 1500 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 410 pages.
• Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages, c. 800–1056 (1991)

Reformation[edit]

• Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1978; reprinted 1995)
• Dickens, A. G. Martin Luther and the Reformation (1969), basic introduction
• Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany: vol 1: The Reformation (1959)
• Junghans, Helmar. Martin Luther: Exploring His Life and Times, 1483–1546. (book plus CD ROM) (1998)
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation (2005), influential recent survey
• Ranke, Leopold von. History of the Reformation in Germany (1905) 792 pp; by Germany’s foremost scholar complete text online free
• Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation (1920) 861 pages; complete text online free

Early Modern to 1815[edit]

• Asprey, Robert B. Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma (2007)
• Atkinson, C.T. A history of Germany, 1715–1815 (1908) old; focus on political-military-diplomatic history of Germany and Austria online edition
• Blanning, Tim. Frederick the Great: King of Prussia (2016), major new scholarly biography
• Bruford W.H. Germany in the Eighteenth Century The Social Background of the Literary Revival (1935, 1971) online free to borrow, covers social history
• Gagliardo, John G. Germany under the Old Regime 1600–1790 (1991) excerpt
• Gaxotte, Pierre. Frederick the Great (Yale University Press, 1942); 420 pages; political biography by French historian
• Heal, Bridget. The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (2007)
• Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany. Vol 2: 1648–1840 (1962) online
• Hughes, Michael. Early Modern Germany, 1477–1806 (1992)
• Ogilvie, Sheilagh. Germany: A New Social and Economic History, Vol. 1: 1450–1630 (1995) 416pp; Germany: A New Social and Economic History, Vol. 2: 1630–1800 (1996), 448pp
• Ogilvie, Sheilagh. A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany (2003) DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205548.001.0001 online
• Ozment, Steven. Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (2001).
• Schulze, Hagen. The Course of German Nationalism: From Frederick the Great to Bismarck 1763–1867 (1991)
• Storring, Adam L. «‘Our Age’: Frederick the Great, Classical Warfare, and the Uses and Abuses of Military History.» International Journal of Military History and Historiography 1.aop (2021): 1–33.online

1815–1890[edit]

• Blackbourn, David. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918 (1998) excerpt and text search
• Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1984)
• Brandenburg, Erich. From Bismarck to the World War: A History of German Foreign Policy 1870–1914 (1933) 562pp; an old standard scholarly history
• Brose, Eric Dorn. German History, 1789–1871: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Bismarckian Reich. (1997)
• Craig, Gordon A. Germany, 1866–1945 (1978) online
• Hamerow, Theodore S. ed. Age of Bismarck: Documents and Interpretations (1974), 358pp; 133 excerpts from primary sources put in historical context by Professor Hamerow
• Hamerow, Theodore S. ed. Otto Von Bismarck and Imperial Germany: A Historical Assessment (1993), excerpts from historians and primary sources
• Hoyer, Katja. Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918 (2021)
• Ogilvie, Sheilagh, and Richard Overy. Germany: A New Social and Economic History Volume 3: Since 1800 (2004)
• Pflanze Otto, ed. The Unification of Germany, 1848–1871 (1979), essays by historians
• Ramm, Agatha. Germany, 1789–1919: a political history (1967) online free to borrow
• Sheehan, James J. German History, 1770–1866 (1993), the major survey in English online
• Steinberg, Jonathan. Bismarck: A Life (2011), a major scholarly biography
• Stern, Fritz. Gold and Iron: Bismark, Bleichroder, and the Building of the German Empire (1979) Bismark worked closely with this leading banker and financier excerpt and text search
• Taylor, A.J.P. (1969) [1955]. Bismarck: the Man and the Statesman. New York: Alfred A Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-70387-9. online
• Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. The German Empire 1871–1918 (1984)

1890–1933[edit]

• Balfour, Michael. The Kaiser and his Times (1972) online
• Berghahn, Volker Rolf. Modern Germany: society, economy, and politics in the twentieth century (1987) ACLS E-book
• Berghahn, Volker Rolf. Imperial Germany, 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture, and Politics (2nd ed. 2005)
• Brandenburg, Erich. From Bismarck to the World War: A History of German Foreign Policy 1870–1914 (1927) online.
• Cecil, Lamar. Wilhelm II: Prince and Emperor, 1859–1900 (1989) vol2: Wilhelm II: Emperor and Exile, 1900–1941 (1996)
• Child, John. Edexcel GCSE History A : the making of the modern world : Unit 2A, Germany 1918–39 : student book (2009) online
• Craig, Gordon A. Germany, 1866–1945 (1978) online
• Dugdale, E.T.S. ed. German Diplomatic Documents 1871–1914 (4 vol 1928–31), in English translation. online
• Gordon, Peter E., and John P. McCormick, eds. Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy (Princeton U.P. 2013) 451 pages; scholarly essays on law, culture, politics, philosophy, science, art and architecture
• Herbert, Ulrich. A History of Twentieth-Century Germany (2019) excerpt
• Herwig, Holger H. The First World War: Germany and Austria–Hungary 1914–1918 (1996), ISBN 0-340-57348-1
• Kolb, Eberhard. The Weimar Republic (2005)
• Mommsen, Wolfgang J. Imperial Germany 1867–1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State (1995)
• Morrow, Ian F. D. «The Foreign Policy of Prince Von Bulow, 1898–1909». Cambridge Historical Journal 4#1 (1932): 63–93. online
• Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic (1993)
• Retallack, James. Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Scheck, Raffael. «Lecture Notes, Germany and Europe, 1871–1945» (2008) full text online, a brief textbook by a leading scholar
• Stolper, Gustav. German Economy, 1870–1940: Issues and Trends (Routledge, 2017).
• Watson, Alexander. Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (2014), excerpt

Nazi era[edit]

• Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, (1962) online
• Burleigh, Michael. The Third Reich: A New History. (2000). 864 pp. Stress on antisemitism;
• Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich: A History. (2004) [2003]. 622 pp.; a major scholarly survey; The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939. (2005). 800 pp.; The Third Reich at War 1939–1945 (2009) vol 1-2-3 online
• Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933–1945 (2009) abridged version of the standard two volume history
• Herbert, Ulrich. A History of Twentieth-Century Germany (2019) excerpt
• Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris. vol. 1. 1999. 700 pp. ; vol 2: Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. 2000. 832 pp.; the leading scholarly biography.
• Kirk, Tim. The Longman Companion to Nazi Germany (2017).
• Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, Family Life, and Nazi Ideology, 1919–1945. (1986). 640 pp. The major study
• Overy, Richard. The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (2004); comparative history
• Spielvogel, Jackson J. and David Redles. Hitler and Nazi Germany (6th ed. 2009) excerpt and text search, 5th ed. 2004
• Stackelberg, Roderick. Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies (1999)
• Stackelberg, Roderick, ed. The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany (2007)
• Stibbe, Matthew. Women in the Third Reich, (2003), 208 pp.
• Tooze, Adam. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2007), highly influential new study; online review by Richard Tilly; summary of reviews
• Thomsett, Michael C. The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938–1945 (2nd ed 2007) 278 pages
• Zentner, Christian and Bedürftig, Friedemann, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. (2 vol. 1991). 1120 pp.

Since 1945[edit]

• Bark, Dennis L., and David R. Gress. A History of West Germany Vol 1: From Shadow to Substance, 1945–1963 (1992); ISBN 978-0-631-16787-7; vol 2: Democracy and Its Discontents 1963–1988 (1992) ISBN 978-0-631-16788-4
• Berghahn, Volker Rolf. Modern Germany: Society, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century (1987) ACLS E-book online
• Daum, Andreas. Kennedy in Berlin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-85824-3.
• Gehler, Michael. Three Germanies: West Germany, East Germany and the Berlin Republic (Reaktion Books, 2013).
• Hanrieder, Wolfram F. Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (1989) ISBN 0-300-04022-9
• Herbert, Ulrich. A History of Twentieth-Century Germany (2019) excerpt
• Jähner, Harald. Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 (2022) excerpt

• Jarausch, Konrad H. After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945–1995 (2008)
• Junker, Detlef, ed. The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War (2 vol 2004), 150 short essays by scholars covering 1945–1990 excerpt and text search vol 1; excerpt and text search vol 2
• Main, Steven J. «The Soviet Occupation of Germany. Hunger, Mass Violence and the Struggle for Peace, 1945–1947». Europe-Asia Studies (2014) 66#8 pp: 1380–1382.
• Schwarz, Hans-Peter. Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution and Reconstruction (2 vol 1995) excerpt and text search vol 2
• Smith, Gordon, ed, Developments in German Politics (1992) ISBN 0-8223-1266-2, broad survey of reunified nation
• Weber, Jurgen. Germany, 1945–1990 (Central European University Press, 2004)

Primary sources[edit]

• Beate Ruhm Von Oppen, ed. Documents on Germany under Occupation, 1945–1954 (Oxford University Press, 1955)

GDR[edit]

• Dennis, Mike, and Norman LaPorte. State and Minorities in Communist East Germany (Berghahn Books, 2011) scholarly analysis of treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, guest workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans and others.
• Fulbrook, Mary. Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989 (1998)
• Fulbrook, Mary. The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (2008) excerpt and text search
• Harsch, Donna. Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (2008)
• Jarausch, Konrad H.. and Eve Duffy. Dictatorship As Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (1999)
• Jarausch, Konrad H., and Volker Gransow, eds. Uniting Germany: Documents and Debates, 1944–1993 (1994), primary sources on reunification
• McAdams, A. James. «Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification». Princeton University Press, 1992 and 1993.
• Pence, Katherine, and Paul Betts, eds. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (2008) excerpt and text search
• Pritchard, Gareth. The Making of the GDR, 1945–53 (2004)
• Ross, Corey. The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (2002)
• Saxonberg, Steven. The fall: A comparative study of the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland (Routledge, 2013).
• Steiner, André. The Plans That Failed: An Economic History of East Germany, 1945–1989 (2010)

Historiography[edit]

• Berghahn, Volker R., and Simone Lassig, eds. Biography between Structure and Agency: Central European Lives in International Historiography (2008)
• Chickering, Roger, ed. Imperial Germany: A Historiographical Companion (1996), 552pp; 18 essays by specialists;
• Evans, Richard J. Rereading German History: From Unification to Reunification, 1800–1996 (1997)
• Hagemann, Karen, and Jean H. Quataert, eds. Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (2008)
• Hagemann, Karen (2007). «From the Margins to the Mainstream? Women’s and Gender History in Germany». Journal of Women’s History. 19 (1): 193–199. doi:10.1353/jowh.2007.0014. S2CID 143068850.
• Hagen, William W. German History in Modern Times: Four Lives of the Nation (2012) excerpt
• Jarausch, Konrad H., and Michael Geyer, eds. Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (2003)
• Klessmann, Christoph. The Divided Past: Rewriting Post-War German History (2001)
• Lehmann, Hartmut, and James Van Horn Melton, eds. Paths of Continuity: Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s (2003)
• Perkins, J. A. «Dualism in German Agrarian Historiography, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Apr 1986, Vol. 28 Issue 2, pp 287–330,
• Rüger, Jan, and Nikolaus Wachsmann, eds. Rewriting German history: New Perspectives on Modern Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
• Stuchtey, Benedikt, and Peter Wende, eds. British and German Historiography, 1750–1950: Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers (2000)

Список глав правительств Германии включает руководителей немецкого национального правительства с 1867 года (включая период послевоенного разделения страны на восточно- и западногерманское государства).

В Северогерманском союзе впервые был установлен пост федерального канцлера. В Германской империи с 1871 по 1918 годы, а также в Веймарской республике с 1919 по 1933 годы и в Третьем рейхе с 1933 по 1945 годы, официальный титул главы правительства был рейхсканцлер. В ФРГ (с 1949 года) он получил название федерального канцлера.

В период ноябрьской революции 1918—1919 годов главой правительства являлся председатель Совета народных уполномоченных, в переходный период при установлении Веймарской республики в 1919 году — премьер-министр.

Также премьер-министр возглавлял правительство ГДР с 1949 по 1958 годы, и в 1990 году перед объединением Германии. С 1958 по 1990 годы он именовался «председатель Совета министров».

Северогерманский союз (1867—1871)

Северогерманский союз (нем. Norddeutscher Bund), конфедеративный союз германских государств, стал этапом реализации объединительных стремлений в Германии. После заключения Пражского мира, увенчавшего победу Пруссии в австро-прусской войне 1866 года, некоторые из государств, отклонивших предложенный им Пруссией перед открытием военных действий нейтралитет (Ганновер, Гессен-Кассель, Нассау, вольный город Франкфурт-на-Майне), были прямо присоединены к ней, равно как и Гольштейн и Шлезвиг. Остальные государства Северной Германии (числом 21) 10 августа 1866 года вошли в состав новой федерации, которая, отвергнув принцип союза государств, организовалась в виде союзного государства, руководящая роль в котором была отведена Пруссии. 18 августа 1866 года был подписан союзный договор, по которому Пруссия и 17 северогерманских государств (осенью присоединились ещё четыре) обязывались принять закон о выборах в межгосударственный парламент, 15 октября прусский ландтаг (нем. Preußischer Landtag) принял закон о выборах в Конституционный рейхстаг Северо-Германского союза (нем. Wahlgesetz für den konstituierenden Reichstag des Norddeutschen Bundes). 12 февраля 1867 года прошли выборы, 24 февраля Конституционный рейхстаг собрался на первое заседание, а 16 апреля принял Северогерманскую федеральную конституцию (нем. Norddeutsche Bundesverfassung), по которой 31 августа 1867 года прошли первые выборы в рейхстаг.

Государства, вошедшие в союз, продолжали пользоваться своими конституциями, сохраняли свои сословные собрания в качестве законодательных органов и министерства в качестве исполнительных органов, но должны были уступить союзу военное и морское управление, дипломатические сношения, заведование почтой, телеграфами, железными дорогами, денежной и метрической системами, банками, таможнями.

Кроме рейхстага, был создан союзный совет — бундесрат (нем. Bundesrat), составленный из делегатов отдельных государств, которые были связаны инструкциями своих правительств. Представительство в бундесрате было неравномерным: Пруссия, например, имела 17 голосов, а Саксония — 4. Председателем бундесрата являлся ведавший всеми внешними и внутренними делами союза назначенный королём Пруссии федеральный канцлер (нем. Bundeskanzler). Именно прусскому королю, как федеральному президенту (нем. Bundespräsident), принадлежало право объявлять войну и заключать мир от имени союза, вести дипломатические переговоры, заключать договоры; в качестве главнокомандующего союзной армией он имел право назначать высших офицеров. Он был главою внутреннего управления, назначал главных должностных лиц союза, созывал и распускал рейхстаг.

№	Федеральный канцлер	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия
1		граф Отто Эдуард Леопольд фон Бисмарк-Шёнхаузен (1815—1898) нем. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schönhausen	1 июля 1867	18 января 1871	независимый

Германская империя (1871—1918)

Герма́нская импе́рия — принятое в российской историографии название немецкого государства в 1871—1918 годах.

Его официальное название в 1871—1945 годах — Deutsches Reich (Германский рейх) — переводится и как «Германская империя», и как «Германское государство» (с 1943 года — Großdeutsches Reich, «Великогерманское государство / империя»). В историографии этот период времени принято делить на Германскую империю (1871—1918), Веймарскую республику (1918—1933) и Третий рейх (нацистскую Германию) (1933—1945).

После победы в франко-прусской войне 1870 года, по итогам которой к Пруссии были присоединены Эльзас и Лотарингия, 18 января 1871 года в Зеркальной галерее Версальского дворца была провозглашена Германская империя, а титул её кайзера принял Вильгельм I. К империи быстро присоединились государства, не входившие в состав Северогерманского союза — королевства Саксония, Бавария и Вюртемберг и прочие южногерманские государства.

На волне популярности Отто фон Бисмарк получил титул князя и был назначен рейхсканцлером (Reichskanzler), став главным органом исполнительной власти и вместе с тем единственным лицом, ответственным перед бундесратом и рейхстагом. В империи не существовало министров, их заменяли подчинённые рейхсканцлеру государственные секретари, председательствовавшие в имперских ведомствах (нем. Reichsämter, первоначально — союзных ведомствах, нем. Bundesamt). Рейхсканцлер назначался и отрешался от должности кайзером.

№	Рейхсканцлер	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия	Кабинет
(1)		князь Отто Эдуард Леопольд фон Бисмарк-Шёнхаузен (1815—1898) нем. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schönhausen	21 марта 1871	20 марта 1890[1]	независимый	фон Бисмарк (нем.)русск.
2		генерал от инфантерии, граф[2] Георг Лео фон Каприви де Капрера де Монтекукколи (1831—1899) нем. Georg Leo von Caprivi de Caprera de Montecuccoli	20 марта 1890	28 октября 1894	фон Каприви (нем.)русск.
3		князь Хлодвиг Карл Виктор цу Гогенлоэ-Шиллингсфюрст (1819—1901) нем. Chlodwig Carl Viktor, Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst	28 октября 1894	17 октября 1900	Гогенлоэ-Шиллингсфюрст (нем.)русск.
4		граф, с 6 сентября 1905 года князь Бернгард Генрих Карл Мартин фон Бюлов (1849—1929) нем. Bernhard Heinrich Martin Karl Graf (Fürst) von Bülow	17 октября 1900	14 июля 1909	фон Бюлов (нем.)русск.
5		Теобальд Теодор Фридрих Альфред фон Бетман-Гольвег (1856—1921) нем. Theobald Theodor Friedrich Alfred von Bethmann Hollweg	14 июля 1909	13 июля 1917	Бетман-Гольвег (нем.)русск.
6		Георг Михаэлис (1857—1936) нем. Georg Michaelis	13 июля 1917	1 ноября 1917	Михаэлис (нем.)русск.
7		граф Георг Фридрих Карл фон Гертлинг (1843—1919) нем. Georg Friedrich Karl Graf von Hertling	1 ноября 1917	3 октября 1918	Партия Центра	фон Гертлинг (нем.)русск.
8		Принц Максимилиан Александр Фридрих Вильгельм фон Баден (1867—1929) нем. Maximilian Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm Prinz von Baden	3 октября 1918	9 ноября 1918[1]	независимый	фон Баден (нем.)русск.
9 (а)		Фридрих Эберт (1871—1925) нем. Friedrich Ebert	9 ноября 1918[3]	10 ноября 1918[4]	Социал-демократическая партия Германии в коалиции с Независимой социал-демократической партией Германии

Революционный период (1918—1919)

Ноя́брьская револю́ция (нем. Novemberrevolution) — революция в ноябре 1918 года в Германской империи, приведшая к установлению в Германии режима парламентской демократии, известного под названием Веймарская республика. Её началом считается восстание матросов в Киле 4 ноября 1918 года, кульминационным моментом — провозглашение республики в полдень 9 ноября, днём формального окончания — 11 августа 1919 года, когда президент республики Фридрих Эберт подписал Веймарскую конституцию.

9 ноября 1918 года рейхсканцлер принц Максимилиан Баденский по собственной инициативе объявил об отречении кайзера от обоих престолов (прусского и имперского) и передал свои полномочия лидеру социал-демократов Фридриху Эберту, который возглавлял большинство в рейхстаге, сформированном по итогам выборов 1912 года. После этого член правительства Максимилиана Баденского Филипп Шейдеман провозгласил Германию республикой. На следующий день Общее собрание берлинских рабочих и солдатских советов (нем. Vollversammlung der Berliner Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte) избрало временные органы государственной власти — Исполнительный совет рабочих и солдатских советов Большого Берлина (нем. Vollzugsrat des Arbeiter- und Soldatenrates Groß-Berlin) и ставший временным правительством Совет народных уполномоченных (нем. Rat der Volksbeauftragten), в состав которого первоначально вошли по 3 представителя социал-демократической и независимой социал-демократической партий.

Первоначально председателями Совета народных уполномоченных (нем. Vorsitzende des Rates der Volksbeauftragten) стали социал-демократ Фридрих Эберт и независимый социал-демократ Гуго Гаазе. Кайзер, находившийся в ставке в Спа, вечером 10 ноября выехал в Нидерланды, где и отрёкся от обоих престолов 28 ноября. 29 декабря 1919 года независимые социал-демократы вышли из Совета народных уполномоченных и он был дополнен социал-демократами.

№	Председатель[5] Совета народных уполномоченных	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия	Кабинет
9 (б)		Фридрих Эберт (1871—1925) нем. Friedrich Ebert	10 ноября 1918[4]	13 февраля 1919	Социал-демократическая партия Германии	Совет народных уполномоченных
9 (в)		Гуго Гаазе (1863—1919) нем. Hugo Haase	29 декабря 1918[1]	Независимая социал-демократическая партия Германии

Веймарская республика (1919—1933)

После состоявшихся 19 января 1919 года выборов, первое заседание учредительного национального собрания состоялось 6 февраля 1919 года.

10 февраля 1919 года был принят Закон о временной имперской власти, согласно которому главой государства стал рейхспрезидент (нем. Reichspräsident), избираемый национальным собранием, исполнительным органом — имперское министерство (нем. Reichsministerium), назначаемое рейхспрезидентом, состоящее из имперского премьер-министра (нем. Reichsministerpräsident) и имперских министров.

На следующий день (11 февраля) первым рейхспрезидентом был избран Фридрих Эберт. 11 февраля 1919 года он назначил Филиппа Шейдемана первым премьер-министром.

В своём окончательном варианте Веймарская конституция была принята Веймарским учредительным собранием 31 июля 1919 года и подписана рейхспрезидентом Фридрихом Эбертом 11 августа.

По ней в Германии была установлена парламентская демократия с закреплёнными в конституции основными либеральными и социальными правами. На общегосударственном уровне законодательную деятельность в форме имперских законов осуществляли рейхсрат (верхняя палата парламента, орган представительства земель), и выбираемый населением рейхстаг, который также принимал государственный бюджет и смещал с должности рейхсканцлера и любого из министров правительства по схеме вотума недоверия. Рейхсканцлер подчинялся не только рейхстагу, но и рейхспрезиденту, имевшему право назначать его и отправлять в отставку. Рейхспрезидента, часто сопоставляемого с кайзером, избирали на прямых выборах сроком на семь лет. Он мог с согласия рейхсканцлера объявить в стране чрезвычайное положение, на время которого в стране временно прекращали своё действие основные конституционные права. Возможному сопротивлению этому решению со стороны рейхстага противопоставлялось право рейхспрезидента на роспуск парламента. Это сделало возможной фактическую самоликвидацию демократического строя после назначения рейхспрезидентом Гинденбургом на пост рейхсканцлера Адольфа Гитлера в январе 1933 года.

Как правило, в случае отставки кабинета он продолжал действовать в качестве временного правительства до формирования нового кабинета министров (иногда значительный период времени).

№	Рейхсканцлер (до 14 августа 1919 Премьер-министр)	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия	Выборы	Кабинет
10		Филипп Генрих Шейдеман (1865—1939) нем. Philipp Heinrich Scheidemann	13 февраля 1919	27 июня 1919	Социал-демократическая партия Германии в коалиции с Немецкой демократической партией и Партией Центра	1919 (англ.)русск.	Шейдеман (нем.)русск.
11		Густав Адольф Бауэр (1870—1944) нем. Gustav Adolf Bauer	27 июня 1919	26 марта 1920[1]	Бауэр (нем.)русск.
12 (I)		Герман Мюллер (1876—1931) нем. Hermann Müller	27 марта 1920	8 июня 1920	Мюллер—I (нем.)русск.
13		Константин Ференбах (1852—1926) нем. Constantin Fehrenbach	8 июня 1920	4 мая 1921[6]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Немецкой народной партией и Немецкой демократической партией	1920 (англ.)русск.	Ференбах (нем.)русск.
14 (I—II)		Карл Йозеф Вирт (1879—1956) нем. Karl Josef Wirth	10 мая 1921	21 октября 1921[6]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Социал-демократической партией Германии и Немецкой демократической партией	Вирт—I (нем.)русск.
26 октября 1921	14 ноября 1922[6]	Вирт—II (нем.)русск.
15		Вильгельм Карл Йозеф Куно (1876—1933) нем. Wilhelm Carl Josef Cuno	22 ноября 1922	14 августа 1923[6]	независимый в коалиции с Партией Центра, Немецкой народной партией, Немецкой демократической партией и Баварской народной партией	Куно (нем.)русск.
16 (I—II)		Густав Эрнст Штреземан (1878—1929) нем. Gustav Ernst Stresemann	14 августа 1923	3 октября 1923[6]	Немецкая народная партия в коалиции с Немецкой демократической партией и Социал-демократической партией Германии[7]	Штреземан—I (нем.)русск.
6 октября 1923	23 ноября 1923[6]	Штреземан—II (нем.)русск.
17 (I—II)		Вильгельм Маркс (1863—1946) нем. Wilhelm Marx	30 ноября 1923	26 марта 1924[6]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Немецкой народной партией, Немецкой демократической партией и Баварской народной партией	Маркс—I (нем.)русск.
3 июня 1924	15 декабря 1924[6]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Немецкой народной партией и Немецкой демократической партией	1924, май (англ.)русск.	Маркс—II (нем.)русск.
18 (I—II)		Ганс Лютер (1879—1962) нем. Hans Luther	15 января 1925	5 декабря 1925[6]	независимый в коалиции с Партией Центра, Немецкой народной партией, Немецкой демократической партией, Баварской народной партией и Немецкой национальной народной партией[8]	1924, декабрь (англ.)русск.	Лютер—I (нем.)русск.
20 января 1926	12 мая 1926[6]	независимый в коалиции с Партией Центра, Немецкой народной партией, Немецкой демократической партией и Баварской народной партией	Лютер—II (нем.)русск.
17 (III—IV)		Вильгельм Маркс (1863—1946) нем. Wilhelm Marx	17 мая 1926	1 февраля 1927[9]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Немецкой народной партией, Немецкой национальной народной партией и Баварской народной партией	Маркс—III (нем.)русск.
1 февраля 1927	12 июня 1928[6]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Немецкой народной партией и Немецкой демократической партией	Маркс—IV (нем.)русск.
12 (II)		Герман Мюллер (1876—1931) нем. Hermann Müller	28 июня 1928	27 марта 1930[6]	Социал-демократическая партия Германии в коалиции с Партией Центра, Немецкой демократической партией, Немецкой народной партией и Баварской народной партией	1928	Мюллер—II (нем.)русск.
19 (I—II)		Генрих Алойзиус Мария Элизабет Брюнинг (1885—1970) нем. Heinrich Aloysius Maria Elisabeth Brüning	29 марта 1930	10 октября 1931	Партия Центра в коалиции с Немецкой народной партией, Немецкой демократической партией, Баварской народной партией, Партией немецкого среднего класса (англ.)русск. и Консервативной народной партией (англ.)русск.	Брюнинг—I (нем.)русск.
1930
10 октября 1931	30 мая 1932[6]	Партия Центра в коалиции с Баварской народной партией, Немецкой государственной партией и Консервативной народной партией (англ.)русск.	Брюнинг—II (нем.)русск.
20		Франц Йозеф Герман Михаэль Мария фон Папен (1879—1969) нем. Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen	1 июня 1932	17 ноября 1932[6]	независимый[10] в коалиции с Немецкой национальной народной партией	1932, июль	фон Папен (нем.)русск.
21		генерал от инфантерии Курт Фердинанд Фридрих Герман фон Шлейхер (1882—1934) нем. Kurt Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann von Schleicher	3 декабря 1932	28 января 1933[11]	независимый в коалиции с Немецкой национальной народной партией	1932, ноябрь	фон Шлейхер (нем.)русск.

Третий рейх (1933—1945)

Тре́тий рейх (нем. Drittes Reich — Третья империя, Третья держава) — неофициальное название Германии с 24 марта 1933 года (когда был принят закон «О защите народа и рейха», предоставивший Адольфу Гитлеру чрезвычайные полномочия и основу для создания диктатуры) по 23 мая 1945 года. Первая дата является условной, в части источников в качестве даты основания Третьего рейха используется 30 января 1933 года (назначение Гитлера рейхсканцлером).

Официальное название Германии с 1871 года по 26 июня 1943 года — Deutsches Reich, с 26 июня 1943 по 23 мая 1945 года — Großdeutsches Reich (Великогерманская империя). Слово «рейх», обозначающее земли, подчинённые одной власти, обычно переводится как «государство» или «империя» в зависимости от контекста.

В этот период страна представляла собой тоталитарное государство с однопартийной системой и доминирующей идеологией (национал-социализмом), контролю подвергались все сферы жизни общества. Третий рейх связан с властью Национал-социалистической немецкой рабочей партии под руководством Адольфа Гитлера, который после смерти рейхспрезидента Гинденбурга (2 августа 1934 года) стал главой государства (официальный титул — «фюрер и рейхсканцлер»).

Федеративное устройство Германии, установленное Веймарской конституцией, было заменено унитарным построением государства законом «О новом устройстве рейха» (Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs) от 30 января 1934 года.

После военного поражения во Второй мировой войне Гитлер покончил с собой 30 апреля 1945 года, передав в своём политическом завещании власть назначенным рейхспрезидентом гроссадмиралу Карлу Дёницу и рейхсканцлером Йозефу Геббельсу. Узнав 1 мая о самоубийстве Геббельса, Дёниц договорился о формировании правительства с графом Людвигом Шверином фон Крозигом, отказавшимся от поста рейхсминистра и ставшим главным министром кабинета.

23 мая 1945 года Фленсбургское правительство (названное так по месту своего фактического пребывания в городе Фленсбург недалеко от границы с Данией и пытавшееся управлять ещё не оккупированной союзниками территорией) было арестовано в соответствии с приказом Верховного главнокомандующего экспедиционными силами союзников генерала армии Эйзенхауэра.

№	Фюрер и рейхсканцлер (до 2 августа 1934 рейхсканцлер, с 1 мая 1945 главный министр)	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия	Выборы	Кабинет
22		Адольф Гитлер (1889—1945) нем. Adolf Hitler	30 января 1933	30 апреля 1945[12]	Национал-социалистическая немецкая рабочая партия до 27 июня 1933 года в коалиции с Немецкой национальной народной партией[13]	1933, март	Гитлер
1933, ноябрь
1936
1938
23		Пауль Йозеф Геббельс (1897—1945) нем. Paul Joseph Goebbels	30 апреля 1945[14]	1 мая 1945[12]	Национал-социалистическая немецкая рабочая партия	Геббельс
24		граф Иоганн Людвиг Шверин фон Крозиг (1887—1977) нем. Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk	1 мая 1945	23 мая 1945[15]	независимый в коалиции с Национал-социалистической немецкой рабочей партией	фон Крозиг

Федеративная Республика Германия (с 1949)

Федерати́вная Респу́блика Герма́ния^[16] (нем. Bundesrepublik Deutschland) была провозглашена 23 мая 1949 года на территориях, расположенных на американской, британской и французской зонах оккупации нацистской Германии (Тризония). Предполагалось, что впоследствии в её состав войдут и остальные германские территории, что предусматривалось и обеспечивалось специальной статьёй 23 Конституции ФРГ. В том же году 7 октября на территории советской зоны оккупации была провозглашена Германская Демократическая Республика, территория которой 3 октября 1990 года после мирной революции в ГДР была интегрирована в состав ФРГ.

Федеральный президент (глава государства) выполняет представительские функции и назначает федерального канцлера, который является главой Федерального правительства и руководит его деятельностью.

№	Федеральный канцлер	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия	Выборы	Кабинет
25 (I—V)		Конрад Герман Йозеф Аденауэр (1876—1967) нем. Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer	15 сентября 1949	20 октября 1953	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции с Немецкой партией и Свободной демократической партией	1949	Аденауэр—I (нем.)русск.
20 октября 1953	29 октября 1957	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции с Немецкой партией, Свободной демократической партией (до 23 февраля 1956 года)[18] и Всегерманским блоком / Лигой эмигрантов и лишённых прав (англ.)русск.	1953	Аденауэр—II (нем.)русск.
29 октября 1957	14 ноября 1961	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции с Немецкой партией	1957	Аденауэр—III (нем.)русск.
14 ноября 1961	13 декабря 1962	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией	1961	Аденауэр—IV (нем.)русск.
14 декабря 1962	11 октября 1963	Аденауэр—V (нем.)русск.
26 (I—II)		Людвиг Вильгельм Эрхард (1897—1977) нем. Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard	17 октября 1963	26 октября 1965	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] до 28 октября 1966 года в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией[19]	Эрхард—I (нем.)русск.
26 октября 1965	30 ноября 1966	1965	Эрхард—II (нем.)русск.
27		Курт Георг Кизингер (1904—1988) нем. Kurt Georg Kiesinger	1 декабря 1966	21 октября 1969	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции с Социал-демократической партией Германии	Кизингер (нем.)русск.
28 (I—II)		Вилли Брандт (1913—1992) нем. Willy Brandt (настоящее имя — Герберт Эрнст Карл Фрам нем. Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm)	22 октября 1969	15 декабря 1972	Социал-демократическая партия Германии в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией	1969	Брандт—I (нем.)русск.
15 декабря 1972	7 мая 1974	1972	Брандт—II (нем.)русск.
и.о.		Вальтер Шеель (1919—2016) нем. Walter Scheel	7 мая 1974	16 мая 1974	Свободная демократическая партия в коалиции с Социал-демократической партией Германии
29 (I—III)		Гельмут Генрих Вальдемар Шмидт (1918—2015) нем. Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt	16 мая 1974	14 декабря 1976	Социал-демократическая партия Германии до 17 сентября 1982 года в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией[20]	Шмидт—I (нем.)русск.
16 декабря 1976	4 ноября 1980	1976	Шмидт—II (нем.)русск.
6 ноября 1980	1 октября 1982	1980	Шмидт—III (нем.)русск.
30 (I—V)		Гельмут Йозеф Михаэль Коль (1930—2017) нем. Helmut Josef Michael Kohl	1 октября 1982	29 марта 1983	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией	Коль—I (нем.)русск.
30 марта 1983	11 марта 1987	1983	Коль—II (нем.)русск.
12 марта 1987	18 января 1991	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией и после 3 октября 1990 года с Немецким социальным союзом[21]	1987	Коль—III (нем.)русск.
18 января 1991	17 ноября 1994	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией	1990	Коль—IV (нем.)русск.
17 ноября 1994	27 октября 1998	1994	Коль—V (нем.)русск.
31 (I—II)		Герхард Фриц Курт Шрёдер (1944—) нем. Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder	27 октября 1998	22 октября 2002	Социал-демократическая партия Германии в коалиции с Союзом 90/Зелёные	1998	Шрёдер—I (нем.)русск.
22 октября 2002	22 ноября 2005	2002	Шрёдер—II (нем.)русск.
32 (I—IV)		Ангела Доротея Меркель (1954—) нем. Angela Dorothea Merkel	22 ноября 2005	28 октября 2009	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции с Социал-демократической партией Германии	2005	Меркель—I
28 октября 2009	17 декабря 2013	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции со Свободной демократической партией	2009	Меркель—II
17 декабря 2013	14 марта 2018	Христианско-демократический союз Германии / Христианско-социальный союз в Баварии[17] в коалиции с Социал-демократической партией Германии	2013	Меркель—III
14 марта 2018	действующий	2017	Меркель—IV

Германская Демократическая Республика (1949—1990)

Герма́нская Демократи́ческая Респу́блика (ГДР) (нем. Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) — государство, существовавшее с 7 октября 1949 года до 3 октября 1990 года.

Основной закон Федеративной Республики Германии, принятый 23 мая 1949 года, германские земли Советской оккупационной зоны не признал. 15—16 мая 1949 года в них прошли выборы делегатов Немецкого народного конгресса, который 30 мая 1949 года принял конституцию ГДР, признанную пятью землями Советской зоны оккупации и оформившую их политический союз.

В ходе II-го Немецкого народного конгресса 19 марта 1948 года был выделен постоянно действующий Народный совет. 7 октября 1949 года Народный совет провозгласил создание ГДР и сам реорганизовался в Народную палату ГДР.

Выборы в Народную палату и Палату земель первого созыва были назначены на 19 октября 1949 года, до их проведения и формирования Правительства были образованы Временные законодательные органы и Временное правительство, президентом и премьер-министром были избраны сопредседатели Социалистической единой партии Германии (СЕПГ) Вильгельм Пик и Отто Гротеволь, заместителями премьер-министра — заместитель председателя СЕПГ Вальтер Ульбрихт, председатель Либерально-демократической партии Германии (ЛДПГ) Герман Кастнер и председатель Христианско-демократического союза (ХДС) Отто Нушке (англ.)русск.. 30 февраля 1950 года СЕПГ, ЛДПГ и ХДС создали Национальный фронт демократической Германии (нем. Nationale Front des Demokratischen Deutschlands, с 1973 года — Национальный фронт ГДР, нем. Nationale Front der DDR), сформировавший единый и фактически единственный избирательный список, который победил на выборах в Палату земель и Народную палату. 8 ноября 1950 года Народной палатой было сформировано постоянное Правительство во главе с Отто Гротеволем, состоявшее только из представителей Национального фронта. В последующем формирование правительства Народным фронтом во главе с представителем СЕПГ стало традиционным.

23 февраля 1952 года земли были упразднены, соответственно были упразднены их законодательные органы (ландтаги) и земельные правительства, отменены земельные конституции и земельные законы.

До 8 декабря 1958 года должность главы правительства называлась премьер-министр (нем. Ministerpräsident der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik), затем — председатель Совета министров (нем. Vorsitzende des Ministerrates der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik), с 1990 года вновь премьер-министр.

5 декабря 1989 года Национальный фронт покинули ХДС и ЛДПГ, в связи с чем фронт потерял своё значение. 16 декабря правящая СЕПГ была преобразована в Партию демократического социализма и дистанцировалась от прежней политики. 20 февраля 1990 года поправка к конституции ГДР исключила из неё упоминания Национального фронта.^[22]

3 октября 1990 года произошло вхождение ГДР и Западного Берлина в состав ФРГ в соответствии с конституцией ФРГ. На территории ГДР были воссозданы пять новых земель, объединённый Берлин также был провозглашён самостоятельной землёй. Правовую основу для объединения положил Договор об окончательном урегулировании в отношении Германии.

№	Председатель Совета министров (до 8 декабря 1958 года и с 12 апреля 1990 года премьер-министр)	Начало полномочий	Окончание полномочий	Партия	Выборы	Кабинет
А (I—V)		Отто Гротеволь (1894—1964) нем. Otto Grotewohl	7 октября 1949	8 ноября 1950	Социалистическая единая партия Германии в коалиции с Либерально-демократической партией Германии и Христианско-демократическим союзом	1949 (англ.)русск.	Гротеволь—I (нем.)русск.
8 ноября 1950	19 ноября 1954	Социалистическая единая партия Германии во главе Национального фронта демократической Германии	1950 (англ.)русск.	Гротеволь—II (нем.)русск.
19 ноября 1954	7 декабря 1958	1954 (англ.)русск.	Гротеволь—III (нем.)русск.
7 декабря 1958	14 ноября 1963	1958 (англ.)русск.	Гротеволь—IV (нем.)русск.
14 ноября 1963	21 сентября 1964[23]	1963 (англ.)русск.	Гротеволь—V / Штоф—I (нем.)русск.
Б (I—III)		Вилли Штоф (1914—1999) нем. Willi Stoph	24 сентября 1964[24]	14 июля 1967
14 июля 1967	26 ноября 1971	1967 (англ.)русск.	Штоф—II (нем.)русск.
26 ноября 1971	3 октября 1973	1971 (англ.)русск.	Штоф—III / Зиндерман (нем.)русск.
В		Хорст Зиндерман (1915—1990) нем. Horst Sindermann	3 октября 1973	29 октября 1976	Социалистическая единая партия Германии во главе Национального фронта ГДР
Б (IV—VI)		Вилли Штоф (1914—1999) нем. Willi Stoph	29 октября 1976	26 июня 1981	1976 (англ.)русск.	Штоф—IV (нем.)русск.
26 июня 1981	17 июня 1986	1981 (англ.)русск.	Штоф—V (нем.)русск.
17 июня 1986	13 ноября 1989	1986	Штоф—VI (нем.)русск.
Г		Ханс Модров (1928—) нем. Hans Modrow	13 ноября 1989	12 апреля 1990	Социалистическая единая партия Германии → Партия демократического социализма[25] до 5 декабря 1989 года во главе Национального фронта ГДР[26]	Модров (нем.)русск.
Д		Лотар де Мезьер (1940—) нем. Lothar de Maizière	12 апреля 1990	2 октября 1990	Христианско-демократический союз во главе Альянса за Германию и в коалиции с Социал-демократической партией в ГДР	1990	де Мезьер (нем.)русск.

Диаграмма пребывания в должности

Легенда диаграммы:

1 Период монархии

2 Революционный период

3 Веймарская республика

4 Период нацизма

5 ФРГ

6 ГДР

Статистика

Наибольший срок пребывания в должности

Лицо, занимавшее пост канцлера наибольший срок:

• граф, с 1871 года князь Отто Эдуард Леопольд фон Бисмарк-Шёнхаузен — 22 года 262 дня, с 1867 по 1890 годы, в том числе 3 года 263 дня — федеральный канцлер Северогерманского союза и 18 лет 364 дня — рейхсканцлер Германской империи.

Наименьший срок пребывания в должности

Лицо, занимавшее пост канцлера наименьший срок:

• Пауль Йозеф Геббельс — 1 день с 30 апреля по 1 мая 1945 года; был назначен рейхсканцлером Третьего рейха согласно политического завещания Гитлера, покончил с собой на следующий день.

См. также

• Список президентов Германии

Примечания

Ссылки

• Список руководителей Германии  (англ.)

Кто занимает главенствующую роль в Германии: президент или канцлер?

В процессе формирования принципов действия власти в государстве, принимаются положения и правила, согласно которым выбирает форма государственного правления. Еще несколько столетий назад, одной из самых распространенных форм правления была монархия, когда власть переходила только членам монаршей семьи. Однако с течением времени и развитием свобод простых людей, значительная часть стран мира выбрала для себя другую форму правления — Республику.

Здесь, в зависимости от вида республики, определяется кому принадлежит главенствующая роль в государстве: президенту или парламенту, или они имеют взаимосвязь. Так, Россия по форме правления смешанная республика, где правительство, принимая решения, ответственно как перед президентом, так и перед парламентом. А вот в Германии, к примеру, парламентская республика. Это говорит о том, что правлением в государстве занимается парламент, а руководит им канцлер. Непосредственно канцлер становится ответственным за принятие большинства решений, касающихся внешней и внутренней политики страны. Давайте разберемся детальнее.

Президент Германии

Как и в любом европейском государстве, президент Германии является главой страны. Впервые в 1949 году приняли решение об избрании президента, после официального слияния ФРГ и ГДР, вследствие чего была создана общая для всей страны западногерманская система политического правления.

С целью проведения выборов президента в Германии формируется Федеральное собрание, участниками которого являются депутаты парламента (бундестага) и отдельные представители (делегаты) некоторых земель, выбираемые для этого непосредственно земельными парламентами. Выборы осуществляются путем общего голосования сформированного собрания, а президентом становится кандидат, набравший большее число голосов. Вновь избранный федеральный президент будет возглавлять государство в течение 5 лет с правом переизбрания не более 1 раза.

Чтобы стать кандидатом в президенты Германии нужно соответствовать таким критериям:

• возраст баллотирующегося должен быть более 40 лет;
• необходимо иметь гражданство Германии;
• гражданин должен обладать правом избираться в депутаты бундестага.

Обратите внимание! Стать главой государства может любой гражданин Германии, независимо от своих политических взглядов.

После выборов Президент приносит присягу на служение государству во благо народа.

Сразу стоит заметить, что президент в Германии — это формальное должностное лицо, имеющее в большей степени репрезентативную функцию.

К основным должностным обязанностям немецкого президента относятся:

• официальный прием международных представителей;
• посещение дружественных стран мира и участие в международных приемах с целью представления собственного государства;
• подбор главы правительства (канцлера) и представление его перед парламентом;
• принятие присяги от избранного главнокомандующего;
• может стать инициатором роспуска парламента (при невыполнении последним поставленных целей);
• наделен полномочиями назначать и отстранять министров, ранее заявленных канцлером;
• занимается утверждением и отстранением всех федеральных судей, служащих, офицеров и унтер-офицеров;
• заверяет и обнародует принятые законы;
• может использовать право помилования на федеральном уровне (но не амнистировать).

Нужно добавить, что в большинстве случаев, его права назначать и снимать с должностей тоже сугубо формального характера, ведь предварительно принятие решений осуществляется другими органами власти неподконтрольными президентскому влиянию.

Действующим президентом Германии сегодня является Франк-Вальтер Штайнмайер, занявший свой пост с 19.03.2017 года.

Пост немецкого канцлера

Первые упоминания о канцлерах датируются еще средневековьем. Тогда при феодальных дворах были цеха переписчиков, их глав и называли канцлерами. Официально пост «федерального канцлера» появился впервые еще в 1867 году, такое звание получал председатель правительства Северогерманского Союза, а в Германской империи был рейхсканцлер. При императоре рейхсканцлер не был наделен особыми полномочиями, не мог повлиять на законодательство, а его назначением занимался император, он же им и управлял.

Только начиная с 1918 г. канцлер стал подчиняться парламенту. Причиной для отстранения канцлера могло стать недоверие от рейхстага. Только после прихода к власти Адольфа Гитлера с национал-социалистическими партиями, было принято решение об ограничении в правах федерального президента, и расширились полномочия федерального канцлера.

С настоящего времени на пост канцлера президент самостоятельно выбирает достойного претендента и предлагает его на рассмотрение конгрессменам. Предложенного кандидата могут как одобрить, так и отклонить, объявив вотум. Должность канцлера, по сути, является более низкой в классификации государственных служащих, но его полномочия позволяют ему практически полностью самостоятельно регулировать внутреннюю, так и внешнюю политику Германии. Это, в свою очередь, говорит о более высоком статусе канцлера по отношению к президенту. Поэтому к этому выбору подходят довольно серьезно, ведь канцлер выбирается на четырехлетний срок, и от него напрямую будет зависеть будущее Германии.

Так как по факту канцлер — это глава исполнительной власти в Германии, следовательно, он наделен огромным спектром обязанностей и полномочий:

1. Канцлер, согласно закону, наделен правом устанавливать директивы, но при этом должен отвечать за их реализацию;
2. Он самостоятельно может определять количество министров необходимых для полноценной работы правительства, выбирать и убирать министров с занимаемой должности, а также обозначать их обязанности (хотя формально, право назначения министров остается у президента);

Обратите внимание! При широте своих полномочий, канцлер не может влиять на деятельность федеральных министров и вмешиваться в процесс принятия ими решений!

• Канцлер самостоятельно выбирает себе заместителя, при этом вице-канцлер может быть однопартийцем канцлера;
• Канцлеру полностью подчинены правительственный пресс-центр, Федеральная разведывательная служба;
• Будучи главой кабинета министров, канцлер влияет на способы ведения внешней и внутренней политики Германии;
• В случае наступления боевых действий, становится главнокомандующим боевых сил страны.

Как видим, власть федерального канцлера весьма велика, следовательно, именно он обладает решающим голосом во многих сферах деятельности государства.

Начиная с ноября 2005 года бессменным канцлером Германии стала Ангела Меркель (первая женщина канцлер), занимающая свой пост уже четвертый срок. Многие по праву считают ее успешным и прагматичным лидером, способным принимать обдуманные решения, принятые на основании реальных фактов. Однако, как заявила канцлер, это ее последний срок, она готова передать бразды правления следующим поколениям.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The chancellor of Germany^[1] is the political leader of Germany and the head of the federal government. The office holder is responsible for selecting all other members of the government and chairing cabinet meetings.^[2]

The office was created in the North German Confederation in 1867,^[3] when Otto von Bismarck became the first chancellor. With the unification of Germany and establishment of the German Empire in 1871, the Confederation evolved into a German nation-state and its leader became known as the chancellor of Germany.^[4] Originally, the chancellor was only responsible to the emperor. This changed with the constitutional reform in 1918, when the Parliament was given the right to dismiss the chancellor. Under the 1919 Weimar Constitution the chancellors were appointed by the directly elected president, but were responsible to Parliament.^[5]

The constitution was set aside during the 1933–1945 Nazi dictatorship. During Allied occupation, no independent German government and no chancellor existed; and the office was not reconstituted in East Germany, thus the head of government of East Germany was chairman of the Council of Ministers. The 1949 Basic Law made the chancellor the most important office in West Germany, while diminishing the role of the president.^[1]

North German Confederation (1867–1871)[edit]

Federal Chancellor of the North German Confederation

The North German Confederation came into existence after the German Confederation was dissolved following the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The chancellor was appointed by the Bundespräsidium, a position that was held constitutionally by the Prussian king.^[3]

Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Time in office	Political Party
	Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898)	1 July 1867	21 March 1871	3 years, 263 days		Non-partisan

German Reich (1871–1945)[edit]

German Empire (1871–1918)[edit]

Reich Chancellor of the German Reich

The German Empire was born out of the North German Confederation as result of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71). The Präsidium (the Prussian king), which now had also the title Emperor, named the chancellor.^[4]

Political parties:
  None
  Centre

#	Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Time in office	Political party	Cabinet
1		Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898)	21 March 1871	20 March 1890	18 years, 364 days		Non-partisan	Bismarck
2		Leo von Caprivi (1831–1899)	20 March 1890	26 October 1894	4 years, 220 days		Non-partisan	Caprivi
3		Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1819–1901)	29 October 1894	17 October 1900	5 years, 353 days		Non-partisan	Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst
4		Bernhard von Bülow (1849–1929)	17 October 1900	14 July 1909	8 years, 270 days		Non-partisan	Bülow
5		Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856–1921)	14 July 1909	13 July 1917	7 years, 364 days		Non-partisan	Bethmann Hollweg
6		Georg Michaelis (1857–1936)	14 July 1917	1 November 1917	110 days		Non-partisan	Michaelis
7		Georg von Hertling (1843–1919)	1 November 1917	30 September 1918	333 days		Centre Party	Hertling
8		Max von Baden (1867–1929)	3 October 1918	9 November 1918	37 days		Non-partisan	Baden

Weimar Republic (1918–1933)[edit]

On 9 November 1918, Chancellor Max von Baden handed over his office to Friedrich Ebert. Ebert continued to serve as head of government during the three months between the end of the German Empire in November 1918 and the first gathering of the National Assembly in February 1919 as Chairman of the Council of the People’s Deputies, until 29 December 1918 together with USPD Leader Hugo Haase.^[6]

The Weimar Constitution of 1919 set the framework for the Weimar Republic. The chancellors were officially installed by the president; in some cases the chancellor did not have a majority in parliament.^[1][5]

Political parties:
  SPD
  Centre
  DVP
  None

#	Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Time in office	Political party	Cabinet	Reichstag
9		Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925)	9 November 1918	13 February 1919	96 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Council of the People’s Deputies SPD–USPD (as of 29 December 1918 SPD alone)	–
10		Philipp Scheidemann (1865–1939)	13 February 1919	20 June 1919	127 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Scheidemann SPD–DDP–Z (Weimar Coalition)	Nat.Ass. (Jan.1919)
11		Gustav Bauer (1870–1944)	21 June 1919	26 March 1920	273 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Bauer SPD–DDP–Z (Weimar Coalition)
12		Hermann Müller (1876–1931)	27 March 1920	21 June 1920	86 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Müller I SPD–DDP–Z (Weimar Coalition)	Nat.Ass. (Jan.1919)
13		Constantin Fehrenbach (1852–1926)	25 June 1920	4 May 1921	313 days		Centre Party	Fehrenbach Z–DDP–DVP	1 (Jun.1920)
14		Joseph Wirth (1879–1956)	10 May 1921	14 November 1922	1 year, 188 days		Centre Party	Wirth I Z–SPD–DDP (Weimar Coalition)
Wirth II Z–SPD–DDP (Weimar Coalition)
15		Wilhelm Cuno (1876–1933)	22 November 1922	12 August 1923	263 days		Non-partisan	Cuno Ind.–DVP–DDP–Z–BVP
16		Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929)	13 August 1923	30 November 1923	109 days		German People’s Party	Stresemann I DVP–SPD–Z–DDP
Stresemann II DVP–SPD–Z–DDP
17		Wilhelm Marx (1863–1946)	30 November 1923	15 January 1925	1 year, 46 days		Centre Party	Marx I Z–DVP–BVP–DDP
Marx II Z–DVP–DDP	2 (May 1924)
18		Hans Luther (1879–1962)	15 January 1925	12 May 1926	1 year, 117 days		Non-partisan	Luther I DVP–DNVP–Z–DDP–BVP	3 (Dec.1924)
Luther II DVP–Z–DDP–BVP
19		Wilhelm Marx (1863–1946)	17 May 1926	12 June 1928	2 years, 26 days		Centre Party	Marx III Z–DVP–DDP–BVP
Marx IV Z–DNVP–DVP–BVP
20		Hermann Müller (1876–1931)	28 June 1928	27 March 1930	1 year, 272 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Müller II SPD–DVP–DDP–Z–BVP	4 (May 1928)
21		Heinrich Brüning (1885–1970)	30 March 1930	30 May 1932	2 years, 61 days		Centre Party	Brüning I Z–DDP–DVP–WF–BVP–KVP	5 (Sep.1930)
Brüning II Z–DSP–BVP–KVP–CLV
22		Franz von Papen (1879–1969)	1 June 1932	17 November 1932	169 days		Non-partisan	Papen Ind.–DNVP	6 (Jul.1932)
23		Kurt von Schleicher (1882–1934)	3 December 1932	28 January 1933	56 days		Non-partisan	Schleicher Ind.–DNVP	7 (Nov.1932)

Nazi Germany (1933–1945)[edit]

Adolf Hitler’s Machtergreifung (seizure of power) marked the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Nazi Germany. Hitler reigned as dictator and consolidated all power to himself. After the death of president Hindenburg, Hitler took over the president’s powers and called himself Führer und Reichskanzler.

#	Portrait	Name	Start	End	Time in office	Political Party	Cabinet	Reichstag[a]
24		Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)	30 January 1933	30 April 1945	12 years, 90 days		National Socialist German Workers’ Party	Hitler NSDAP – DNVP (until 1933)	8 (Mar. 1933)
9 (Nov. 1933)
10 (Mar. 1936)
11 (Apr. 1938)
25		Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)	30 April 1945	1 May 1945	1 day		National Socialist German Workers’ Party	(Cabinet nominated in Hitler’s testament but never convened) NSDAP	—
26		Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (1887–1977)	1 May 1945	23 May 1945	21 days		National Socialist German Workers’ Party	Schwerin von Krosigk NSDAP	—

Federal Republic of Germany (1949–present)[edit]

In 1949, two separate German states were established: the Federal Republic of Germany (known as West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (known as East Germany). The list below gives the chancellors of West Germany; the government of East Germany was headed by the chairman of the Council of Ministers.^[7] In 1990, East Germany was dissolved as it merged with West Germany; Germany was reunified. It retained the name of the Federal Republic of Germany.^[8]

Political parties:
  CDU (4)
  SPD (4)
  FDP (1)
  Independent (1)

#	Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Time in office	Political party	Cabinet	Bundestag
27		Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967)	15 September 1949	15 October 1963	14 years, 30 days		Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	Adenauer I CDU/CSU–FDP–DP	1 (1949)
Adenauer II CDU/CSU–FDP/FVP–DP–GB/BHE	2 (1953)
Adenauer III CDU/CSU–DP	3 (1957)
Adenauer IV CDU/CSU–FDP	4 (1961)
28		Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977)	15 October 1963	30 November 1966	3 years, 45 days		Independent (No party membership; but affiliated with the CDU)[9][b]	Erhard I CDU/CSU–FDP
Erhard II CDU/CSU–FDP	5 (1965)
29		Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1904–1988)	30 November 1966	21 October 1969	2 years, 324 days		Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	Kiesinger CDU/CSU–SPD
30		Willy Brandt (1913–1992)	21 October 1969	7 May 1974	4 years, 197 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Brandt I SPD–FDP	6 (1969)
Brandt II SPD–FDP	7 (1972)
31		Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015)	16 May 1974	1 October 1982	8 years, 138 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Schmidt I SPD–FDP
Schmidt II SPD–FDP	8 (1976)
Schmidt III SPD–FDP	9 (1980)
32		Helmut Kohl (1930–2017)	1 October 1982	27 October 1998	16 years, 26 days		Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	Kohl I CDU/CSU–FDP
Kohl II CDU/CSU–FDP	10 (1983)
Kohl III CDU/CSU–FDP	11 (1987)
Kohl IV CDU/CSU–FDP	12 (1990)
Kohl V CDU/CSU–FDP	13 (1994)
33		Gerhard Schröder (born 1944)	27 October 1998	22 November 2005	7 years, 26 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Schröder I SPD–Green	14 (1998)
Schröder II SPD–Green	15 (2002)
34		Angela Merkel (born 1954)	22 November 2005	8 December 2021	16 years, 16 days		Christian Democratic Union (CDU)	Merkel I CDU/CSU–SPD	16 (2005)
Merkel II CDU/CSU–FDP	17 (2009)
Merkel III CDU/CSU–SPD	18 (2013)
Merkel IV CDU/CSU–SPD	19 (2017)
35		Olaf Scholz (born 1958)	8 December 2021	Incumbent	1 year, 164 days		Social Democratic Party (SPD)	Scholz SPD–Green–FDP	20 (2021)

Timeline[edit]

See also[edit]

• Leadership of East Germany
• List of chancellors of Germany by time in office
• List of German monarchs
• List of German presidents
• Minister-Presidents of the French «Saar protectorate»
• Religious affiliations of chancellors of Germany
• List of vice chancellors of Germany

References[edit]