Germany
 Flag of Germany | |
| Capital | Berlin |
| Inhabitants | 81.742.000 |
| Language(s) | German |
Germany is a large country in central Europe. From 1949 to 1990, it was divided into the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). On Oct. 3, 1990, East and West Germany were unified into a single nation, also called the Federal Republic of Germany.
As Western Europe's richest and most populous nation, Germany remains a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense organizations.
European power struggles immersed the country in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945. With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC and NATO, while the communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then Germany has expended considerable funds to bring eastern productivity and wages up to western standards.
In January 1999, Germany and 10 other EU countries formed a common European currency, the euro.
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History
Early History of Germany
Ancient tribes from northern Europe migrated to what is now Germany about 1000 B.C. From that time on its history eventually included numerous kingdoms, dynasties, and wars of conquest.
The first "Reich" is usually known as the Holy Roman Empire which began in 962 A.D. under Otto I.
Long-lasting serfdom and religious wars following the Reformation also play a frequent role in German history, and rival leaders often caused changes in control of lands and individual German states, which at one time numbered over 300. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 finally reduced this number to 39.
In 1862, Otto von Bismarck became prime minister of Prussia, located in the north, and led this state to great political and military power. He was finally successful in uniting the northern (predominantly Protestant) and southern (predominantly Catholic) German states into an empire (Second Reich) under Prussian leadership. Wilhelm I was crowned the first Kaiser (emperor) and he in turn appointed Bismarck as the first Chancellor to head the government. By the late 1800's Germany had become a great industrial nation.
World War I
By the early 20th century Europe had divided itself into two armed camps, the Triple alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) and the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and Russia). In 1914 Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated and Europe was plunged into World War I, with the two opposing sides known as the Central Powers and the Allies. Finally, after U.S. entry into the war, Germany, in defeat, signed an armistice on November 11, 1918.
Germany After World War I
World War I left a defeated, impoverished, and embittered Germany. The Treaty of Versailles was filled with the spirit of revenge; a "war-guilt clause" placed responsibility for the war on Germany. Victorious allies demanded payment of thirty-three billion dollars (reparations), prohibited Germany from rebuilding armaments and redistributed her colonies. Germany could ill afford such payments; inflation and unemployment crippled her economy and spirit. The Kaiser gone, the Germans tried a democratic government. The aging hero, General Paul van Hindenburg became President of the Weimar Republic. The fledgling democracy faced the monumental task of reconstruction while handicapped by the pressure of politically diverse factions. The German nation was one of the youngest in Europe, having been led to unity in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck. Now Germany needed a way to restore her self respect and self-sufficiency.
Adolf Hitler's Rise to Power
Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria of peasant parents. He was unsuccessful in school, and was later rejected by an art academy. He became a corporal in the German Army.
Hitler built a strong political base from small beginnings. In 1920, he attended meetings and soon became the leader of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party, known as Nazis). It began with seven members. With shrewd propaganda and Hitler's tremendous skill at public speaking, the Nazis steadily won seats in the Reichstag (legislature). In 1923, they failed in a military coup d'etat; Hitler spent the next few months in jail finishing Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Hitler promised to bring Germany back to her feet, offering jobs, military success and international respect. Nazis received financial support from many major industrialists who feared communism. They felt that Hitler would stop the growth of communism in Germany and yet still remain in control of his creditors. Hitler also built a private army, the stormtroopers (S.A.), whose violent tactics were effective in securing votes. By 1933, Nazis held enough seats in the Reichstag (German elected parliament) by popular, legal elections to force Hindenburg to appoint Hitler second-in-command.
Hitler's policies had two basic premises. A master of manipulating emotions, Hitler told the Germans that they did not really lose World War I -- they were sabotaged at home by Jews. Thus Hitler's personal hatred provided a scapegoat for a nation. Perhaps by venting their frustrations and shame on a minority group, Germans could get on with rebuilding themselves. Secondly, Hitler preached of an Aryan Super-race. He told the Germans that their pure white, blue-eyed, blonde people were destined to be the masters of the world. All other peoples were considered inferior. Relationships with non-Aryans would taint the blood and weaken this race. Jews (and Blacks!) and other groups, particularly southern and eastern Europeans were considered sub-human.
The Germans legally gave Hitler more and more power, finally making him an absolute dictator. The Nazi Fuhrer became Reich Chancellor in January, 1933. After Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler declared himself both President and Chancellor. There was a clause in the Weimar constitution that allowed the Chancellor to take dictatorial power temporarialy in case of emergency. Hitler found that emergency when the Reichstag building burned. It is strongly suspected that the stormtroopers set the fire to provide Hitler with and excuse to impose martial law. In any case, Hitler demanded and was voted dictatorial powers. In essence, he used this control to strip the Reichstag of independent power, to rebuild the armed forces in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and to unite Germans under the Swastika. The economy was rebuilt. The Germans were disciplined and fed. Opponents were effectively silenced or swayed by the stormtroopers and massive propaganda campaigns. Germany had become once more a powerful, militaristic force in Europe. By 1939, Hitler was the idol and absolute master of Germany.
Roots of Antisemitism in Europe
Hitler's hatred of Jews was not anew concept in European culture. For centuries, Crusades, Inquisitions and common law had made Jews, gypsies and other minorities social outcasts. These second class subjects were allowed to participate in very few social roles. Unable to own land or enter most professions, Jews often became bankers and tax collectors--an "unChristian" function, and it was easy for the debtors to hate the person who filled it. Some nations did not consider killing a Jew a punishable crime; the myth of Christ-killer provided an excuse. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Spain in 1492. Persecution and scapegoating were common experiences in the Jewish culture long before Hitler and his officers made them official policy .
"The Final Solution"
The Holocaust, or as Hitler called it, the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem," was an organized, massive attempt to completely annihilate all Jewish people. Once the machinery of extermination was set up, it caught as many non-Jews in its web.
The Final Solution occurred in two basic steps. From 1933 to 1939, legislation and propaganda increasingly limited the basic civil rights of Jews. (See Nuremberg Laws) Basic social activities, jobs and schooling were denied. Jews were forced to place identifying yellow stars on their clothes and doorways. Jewish religious practices were outlawed. Names were changed and passports marked. Segregation, removal from positions as heads of businesses and destruction of Jewish homes and businesses, beatings, imprisonment and concentration camps became the officially imposed order. Hitler decreed that anyone who had one Jewish grandparent could be considered a Jew--regardless of that person's own religious practices. Anyone attempting to protect or deal with Jews was subjected to harassment. So from Hitler's ascension to power up to 1939, the Final Solution attacked a way of life and began a systematic plan of degradation and torture.
However, during World War II the right to life itself came to be denied. A system of deportation to numerous (concentration) labor and extermination camps involved great engineering skills and resources. As Hitler's armies conquered Europe, they put resistors and Jews to work in munitions factories and sent them to die in gas chambers. Hundreds dug their own mass graves and were then lined up to be shot. The personal accounts of survivors and of Nazi officers themselves reveal unspeakable horrors. Wartime creates atrocities on both sides; a true sense of the dehumanization of the Final Solution can only be gained by reading and listening empathetically to eye-witnesses and historical accounts. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau were huse camps designed solely to house starving prisoners and to kill and cremate those too weak to work. Approximately six million Jews, or 67% of the European Jewish population, died this way. Another six million non-Jews suffered the same fate. While fighting World War II and up to the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, the concentration camps attempted to completely erase a people seen as undesirable to the Aryan State. They very nearly succeeded.
Afterward: The Nuernberg Trials
As the allies marched through German territory in 1944 and 1945, they opened the concentration camps. They found letters, diaries and documents concerned with the plans and practices of the Final Solution. The Nazis had kept careful records of their victims. The allies felt a need to make the extent of the Nazis' persecutions known to a stunned world. They wanted to prevent the recurrence of another Holocaust by bringing those responsible to justice. For the first time, leaders of a government were brought to an international court of law as symbols of aggressive militarism, of racial terrorism and of misused power.
In August of 1945, representatives of France, Britain, the USSR and the USA agreed to an international military tribunal to be held in Nuremberg, Germany, the site of Nazi mass rallies. Twenty-two (one in absentia) (See list) high ranking Nazi officers were charged with four crimes, newly defined: a) Conspiracy, b) Crimes against Peace, c) War Crimes, d) Crimes against Humanity. Hitler had committed suicide in April, 1945. Among those left to be tried were his close aides Hermann Goering, Rudolph Hess, Julius Streicher, alfred Jodl, Albert Speer. A common plea of the defense was that there were soldiers following orders without choice. Thus a major question raised by the Trials is the extent of personal moral responsibility in wartimes. In the face of overwhelming evidence, the Nazis, once viewed as the enemy, now came to be seen as barbarous throwbacks from human civilization. Nineteen defendants were convicted; twelve were sentenced to death; seven were sentenced to imprisonment; three were acquitted. After six years of war, the western world turned to a courtroom to face and condemn the systematic persecution of human being.
The Nuremberg Trials can be viewed as a landmark precedent in the struggle for "human rights;" winning nations claimed the jurisdiction to dictate how the losing nation should have treated its own subjects. The world-wide press coverage that the Trials received served as a condemning indictment of totalitarianism. There were (and still are) those who believed in the Nazi cause; to them the Trials established the martyrdom of great leaders by an illegitimate, vengeful victor. Students should draw their own conclusions as to the meaning of the Trials.
Culture
Despite their penchant for continual improvement and modernisation, upholding cultural traditions is dear to the German heart. Many hunters still wear green, master chimney sweeps get around in pitch-black suits and top hats, some Bavarian women don the Dirndl (skirt and blouse), while their menfolk occasionally find suitable occasions to wear typical Bavarian Lederhosen (leather shorts), a Loden (short jacket) and felt hat. In everyday life, Germans are fairly formal, although more so in the Protestant-dominated north than the beer-swilling south. In eastern Germany many older people are relatively unused to tourists, so it's best to err towards deference. Except with very close friends, older Germans still use Herr and Frau in daily discussion. The transition from the formal Sie address to the informal du is generally mutually agreed and sealed with a toast and a handshake. You don't have to worry so much with people under about 40; in fact, exaggerated politeness will probably be laughed off as beginner's Deutsch.
Art
Unsurprisingly for a country whose land has so often been at history's crux, the moods and preoccupations of Germany's people are reflected in a rich artistic heritage: from the claustrophobic beauty of its cathedrals to classical films from the silent era of cinema, from the most influential philosophers (try Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx for starters) to some of the world's great physicists (Einstein and Planck), from the cream of classical composers (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel and Wagner) to contemporary industrial-grunge music and Krautrock, from the genius of Goethe to the revolutionary theatre of Brecht, Germany has it all. The scope of German art is such that it could be the focus of an entire visit.
Arguably the finest artist Germany has produced, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a poet, dramatist, painter, scientist and philosopher. His greatest work, the drama Faust, is a masterful epic of all that went before him, as the archetypal human strives for meaning. The ghost of Goethe inhabits the soul of Germany. A steadfast commitment to excellence in artistry persists in more recent forms, with Germany a notable producer of excellent and challenging cinema from Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, among others.
Traditional clothing
Each country has its own set of cultural values making it special: language, cuisine, traditions, etc. Dress is also a national peculiarity. Speaking of Germany, Dirndl dress and Lederhosen are considered to be the typical pieces of clothes. Yet heritage of cloth in Germany is rich.
Architecture
Contemporary German architecture set its main trends in the first thirty years of the 20th century. The strongest influences came from Weimar and Dessau, where the Bauhaus school was founded in 1919. Under the leadership of Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), the Bauhaus style spread to the far corners of the earth. Today masterpieces of its synthesis of architecture, technology and functionality can be found all over the world. One of the main goals of Bauhaus was to renew architecture. The leaders of Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, were architects.
Music
Forms of German music include Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), krautrock, Bavarian oom-pah and multiple varieties of folk music and volksmusik. Classical composers include Richard Wagner and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Volksmusik is a style of music, usually, though not always, with a singer or singers (duets being particularly common), which is highly popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It features strongly in peak-time television broadcasts on a number of German television channels.
Food
Germany is traditionally a meat-and-potatoes kind of country. Though vegetarian and health-conscious restaurants are starting to sprout, it's best to stop counting calories and cholesterol levels while in Germany. The assault begins with a good German breakfast: rolls, jam, cheese, cold meats, hard-boiled egg and coffee or tea. Lunch is the main meal of the day, but breakfast is so big you'd be forgiven for just picking up a midday bratwurst from the ubiquitous Imbiss (takeaway-food stand). Dinner is allegedly a lighter meal, but this can still mean a plate full of sausages and dumplings. Beer is the national beverage and it's one cultural phenomenon that must be adequately explored. The beer is excellent and relatively cheap. Each region and brewery produces beer with a distinctive taste and body. Impromptu visits to small breweries are better than adding your bulk to the already crowded festivals like Munich's Oktoberfest. In winter, you can experience the glorious haze induced by Glühwein, a hot, spicy mulled wine guaranteed to take the chill away.
Event
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Public holidays
- Jan 1: New Year's Day
- Jan 6: Epiphany - in Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, and Sachsen-Anhalt
- May 1: May Day or Labour Day
- Aug 15: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary - in Bavaria (in predominantly Catholic Communities) and Saarland only
- Oct 3: Day of German Unity
- Oct 31: Reformation Day - in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony- Anhalt and Thuringia (predominantly Evangelical communities) only.
- Nov 1: All Saints Day - in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland Palatinate, Saarland and Thuringia (predominantly Catholic communities) only.
- Dec 24: Christmas Eve - Government closed, half day for shops.
- Dec 25: Christmas Day
- Dec 26: 2nd Day of Christmas
- Dec 31: New Year's Eve - Government closed, half day for shops.
Embassies
- Embassy of Albania in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Croatia in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Ireland in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Israel in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Pakistan in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Paraguay in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Portugal in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Thailand in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Argentina in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Australia in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Austria in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Belgium in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Bolivia in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Brazil in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Canada in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Chile in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of China in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Denmark in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Estonia in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Finland in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of France in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Greece in Berlin, Germany
- General Consulate of Greece in Hamburg, Germany
- Embassy of Hungary in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Iceland in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of India in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Iran in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Italy in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Japan in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Jordan in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Norway in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Poland in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of South Africa in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of Tanzania in Bonn, Germany
- Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Munich, Germany
- Embassy of The United Kingdom in Berlin, Germany
- Embassy of The United States of America in Berlin, Germany
