History
Until becoming a nation-state in 1871, Germany was a patchwork of principalities and city-states. Movements and events associated with its territory have shaped European history since the early Middle Ages. The impact of figures such as Charlemagne, Martin Luther, Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler resonates today, when Germany is a leading proponent of European unity.
Tribes and the Romans
The early inhabitants of present-day Germany were Celts and later nomadic German tribes. Under Emperor Augustus, the Romans began conquering the German lands from around 12 BC, pushing as far as the Rhine and the Danube. Attempts to expand their territory further east were thwarted in AD 9, when Roman general Varus lost three legions – about 20,000 men – in the bloody Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. By AD 300, four main groups of tribes had formed: Alemanni, Franks, Saxons and Goths.
Frankish Reich
Based on the Rhine’s western bank, the Frankish Reich (Empire) existed from the 5th to the 9th centuries and was the successor state of the Western Roman Empire, which had crumbled in 476. Under the leadership of the Merovingian and later the Carolingian dynasties, it became Europe’s most important political power in those early medieval times. In its heyday, the Reich included present-day France, Germany, the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) and half the Italian peninsula.
Its most powerful ruler was Charlemagne (r 768–814), a Carolingian. From his grandiose residence in Aachen, he conquered Lombardy, won territory in Bavaria, waged a 30-year war against the Saxons in the north and was crowned kaiser by the pope in 800, an act that was regarded as a revival of the Roman empire. Charlemagne’s burial in Aachen Dom (Aachen Cathedral) turned the court chapel into a major pilgrimage site.
After Charlemagne’s death, fighting between his son and three grandsons ultimately led to the dissolution of the Frankish Reich in 843. The Treaty of Verdun split the territory into three kingdoms: the Westfrankenreich (West Francia), which evolved into today’s France; the Ostfrankenreich (East Francia), the origin of today’s Germany; and the Mittlere Frankenreich (Middle Francia), which encompassed the Low Countries and areas in present-day France and northern Italy.
Middle Ages
Strong regionalism in Germany today has its roots in the early Middle Ages, when the symbolic heart of power was the cathedral in Aachen and dynasties squabbled and intrigued over territorial spoils. Aachen hosted the coronation of 31 German kings from 936 until 1531, starting with Otto I (aka Otto the Great). Otto proved himself on the battlefield, first by defeating Hungarian troops and then by conquering the Kingdom of Italy. In 962, he renewed Charlemagne’s pledge to protect the papacy, and the pope reciprocated by crowning him emperor and marking the birth of the Holy Roman Empire. For the next 800 years the Kaiser and the pope were strange, and often uneasy, bedfellows.
Power struggles between popes and emperors, the latter of which also had to contend with local princes and prince-bishops, were behind many of the upheavals in the early Middle Ages. In 1254, after the death of the last Hohenstaufen emperor, Friedrich II, the Reich plunged into an era called the Great Interregnum, when no potential successor could gain sufficient support, leaving the Reich rudderless until the election of Rudolf I in 1273. Rudolf was the first of 19 emperors of the Habsburg dynasty that mastered the art of politically expedient marriage and dominated Continental affairs until the early 20th century.
In the 14th century, the basic structure of the Holy Roman Empire solidified. A key document was the Golden Bull of 1356 (so named for its golden seal), a decree issued by Emperor Charles IV that was essentially an early form of an imperial constitution. Most importantly, it set out precise rules for elections by specifying the seven Kurfürsten (prince-electors) entitled to choose the next king to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope. The privilege fell to the rulers of Bohemia, Brandenburg, Saxony and the Palatinate, as well as to the archbishops of Trier, Mainz and Cologne. A simple majority was sufficient in electing the next king.
For ordinary Germans, times were difficult. They battled with panic lynchings, pogroms against Jews and labour shortages – all sparked by the plague (1348–50) that wiped out at least 25% of Europe’s population. While death gripped ordinary Germans, universities were being established all over the country around this time, with Heidelberg’s the first, in 1386.
Hanseatic League
The origins of the Hanseatic League go back to various guilds and associations, established from about the mid-12th century by out-of-town merchants to protect their interests. After Hamburg and Lübeck signed an agreement in 1241 to protect their ships and trading routes, they were joined in their league by Lüneburg, Kiel and a string of Baltic Sea cities stretching east to Greifswald. By 1356 this had grown into the Hanseatic League, encompassing half a dozen other large alliances of cities, with Lübeck playing the lead role.
Luther & the Reformation
In the 16th century, the Renaissance and humanist ideas generated criticism of rampant church abuses, most famously the practice of selling indulgences to exonerate sins. In the university town of Wittenberg in 1517, German monk and theology professor Martin Luther (1483–1546) made public his Ninety-Five Theses, which criticised not only indulgences but also questioned papal infallibility, clerical celibacy and other elements of Catholic doctrine. This was the spark that lit the Reformation. Threatened with excommunication, Luther broke from the Catholic Church and went into hiding in Wartburg castle, in Eisenach, where he translated the New Testament into German.
In 1555, Emperor Karl V’s Peace of Augsburg decree allowed princes to decide the religion of their principality. Lutheran doctrine prospered in the secular north, while the clerical lords in the south, southwest and Austria stuck with Catholicism. In 1618 religious disparity degenerated into the bloody Thirty Years’ War, ending with the Peace of Westphalia treaty of 1648 that rendered the Reich a nominal, impotent state.
Age of Englightenment
In Bavaria, meanwhile, revolutionary rumblings brought out King Ludwig I’s reactionary streak. An arch Catholic, he restored the monasteries, introduced press censorship and authorised the arrest of students, journalists and university professors whom he judged to be subversive. Bavaria was becoming restrictive even as French and American democratic ideals flourished elsewhere in Germany.
On 22 March 1848 Ludwig I abdicated in favour of his son, Maximilian II (r 1848–64), who finally put into place many of the constitutional reforms his father had ignored, such as abolishing censorship and introducing freedom of assembly. His son Ludwig II (r 1864–86) introduced further progressive measures (welfare for the poor, liberalised marriage laws and free trade) early in his reign but ultimately became caught up in a world inspired by mythology, focussing on building grand palaces such as Schloss Neuschwanstein instead of running a kingdom. His death by drowning in shallow water in Lake Starnberg continues to spur conspiracy theories to this day.
oHistory Museums
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
DDR Museum, Berlin
Römisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne
Militärhistorisches Museum, Dresden
Jüdisches Museum, Berlin
Napoleon & Revolutions
In the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution, a Frenchman named Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I) took control of Europe and significantly altered its fate through a series of wars. The defeat of Austrian and Russian troops in the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 led to the 1806 collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the abdication of Kaiser Franz II and a variety of administrative and judicial reforms.
In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, Germany was reorganised into the Deutscher Bund, a confederation of 39 states with a central legislative assembly, the Reichstag, established in Frankfurt. Austria and Prussia dominated this alliance, until a series of bourgeois democratic revolutions swept through German cities in 1848, resulting in Germany’s first-ever freely elected parliamentary delegation convening in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche. Austria, meanwhile, broke away from Germany, came up with its own constitution and promptly relapsed into monarchism. As revolution fizzled in 1850, the confederation resumed, with Prussia and Austria again as dominant members.
Bismarck & the Birth of an Empire
The creation of a unified Germany with Prussia at the helm was the glorious ambition of Otto von Bismarck (1815–98), who had been appointed as Prussian prime minister by King Wilhelm I in 1862. An old-guard militarist, he used intricate diplomacy and a series of wars with neighbouring Denmark and France to achieve his aims. By 1871 Berlin stood as the proud capital of the Deutsches Reich (German Empire), a bicameral, constitutional monarchy. On 18 January the Prussian king was crowned kaiser at Versailles, with Bismarck as his ‘Iron Chancellor’.
The early years of the German empire – a period called Gründerzeit (foundation years) – were marked by major economic growth, fuelled in part by a steady flow of French reparation payments. Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the cities in search of work in factories. New political parties gave a voice to the proletariat, especially the Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP), the forerunner of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany; SPD).
Bismarck tried to make the party illegal but, when pressed, made concessions to the growing and increasingly antagonistic socialist movement, enacting Germany’s first modern social reforms, though it was contrary to his true nature. When Wilhelm II (r 1888–1918) came to power, he wanted to extend social reform, while Bismarck envisioned stricter antisocialist laws. By March 1890, the kaiser had had enough and excised his renegade chancellor from the political scene. Bismarck’s legacy as a brilliant diplomat unravelled as a wealthy, unified and industrially powerful Germany embarked upon a new century.
World War I
The assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, triggered a series of diplomatic decisions that led to WWI, the bloodiest European conflict since the Thirty Years’ War. Initial euphoria and faith in a quick victory soon gave way to despair, as casualties piled up in the battlefield trenches and stomachs grumbled on the home front. When defeat came in 1918, it ushered in a period of turmoil and violence. On 9 November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, bringing an inglorious end to the monarchy.
The seeds of acrimony and humiliation that later led to WWII were sown in the peace conditions of WWI. Germany, militarily broken, teetering on the verge of revolution and caught in a no man’s land between monarchy and modern democracy, signed the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which made it responsible for all losses inflicted upon its enemies. Its borders were trimmed and it was forced to pay high reparations.
The Weimar Republic
In July 1919 the federalist constitution of the fledgling republic was adopted in the town of Weimar, where the constituent assembly had sought refuge from the chaos of Berlin. Germany’s first serious experiment with democracy gave women the vote and established basic human rights, but it also gave the chancellor the right to rule by decree – a concession that would later prove critical in Hitler’s rise to power.
The Weimar Republic (1919–33) was governed by a coalition of left and centre parties, but pleased neither communists nor monarchists. In fact, the 1920s began as anything but ‘golden’, marked, as they were, by the humiliation of a lost war, hyperinflation, mass unemployment, hunger and disease.
Economic stability gradually returned after a new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced in 1923 and with the Dawes Plan in 1924, which limited the crippling reparation payments imposed on Germany after WWI. But the tide turned again when the US stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the world into economic depression. Within weeks, millions of German were jobless, and riots and demonstrations again filled the streets.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
The volatile, increasingly polarised political climate led to clashes between communists and members of a party that had been patiently waiting in the wings – the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, NSDAP, or Nazi Party), led by an Austrian failed artist and WWI corporal named Adolf Hitler. Soon jackboots, brown shirts, oppression and fear would dominate daily life in Germany. Hitler’s NSDAP gained 18% of the national vote in the 1930 elections. In the 1932 presidential election, Hitler challenged incumbent Reichspräsident (President of the Reich) Paul von Hindenburg, but only managed to win 37% of the second-round vote. However, a year later, on 30 January 1933, faced with failed economic reforms and persuasive right-wing advisors, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor.
Hitler moved quickly to consolidate absolute power and to turn the nation’s democracy into a one-party dictatorship. He used Berlin’s Reichstag fire as a pretext to push through the Enabling Act, allowing him to decree laws and change the constitution without consulting parliament. When Hindenburg died a year later, Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor to become Führer of the Third Reich and so began the darkest period in German history.
Jewish Persecution
Jewish people were specifically targeted in what would be a long-term campaign of genocide. In April 1933 Joseph Goebbels, Gauleiter (district leader) of Berlin and head of the well-oiled Ministry of Propaganda, announced a boycott of Jewish businesses. Soon after, Jewish people were expelled from public service and banned from many professions, trades and industries. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived ‘non-Aryans’ of German citizenship and many other rights.
The international community, meanwhile, turned a blind eye to the situation in Germany, perhaps because many leaders were keen to see some order restored to the country after decades of political upheaval. Hitler’s success at stabilising the shaky economy – largely by pumping public money into employment programs – was widely admired. The 1936 Olympic summer games in Berlin were a PR triumph, as Hitler launched a charm offensive. Terror and persecution resumed soon after the closing ceremony.
The targeting of Jewish people escalated on 9 November 1938, with the Reichspogromnacht (often called Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass). Using the assassination of a German consular official by a Polish Jew in Paris as a pretext, Nazi thugs desecrated, burned and demolished synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, property and businesses across the country. Jews had begun to emigrate after 1933, but this event set off a stampede.
The fate of those Jewish people who stayed behind deteriorated after the outbreak of WWII in 1939. At Hitler’s request, a conference in January 1942 in Berlin’s Wannsee came up with the Endlösung (Final Solution): the systematic, bureaucratic and meticulously documented annihilation of European Jews. Sinti and Roma, political opponents, priests, homosexuals and habitual criminals were targeted as well. Of the roughly seven million people who were sent to concentration camps, only 500,000 survived.
Night of the Long Knives
The Sturmabteilung (SA) was a Nazi organisation charged with policing Nazi party meetings and disrupting those convened by political opponents. It played an important role in Hitler’s ascent to power, and by 1934 had become powerful in its own right thanks to its leader Ernst Röhm. The SA numbered two million members, thus easily outnumbering the German army. On 30 June 1934, Hitler, feeling threatened, ordered the black-shirted Schutzstaffel (SS) to round up and kill the SA leadership (including Röhm and at least 75 others) to bring the organisation to heel.
Hitler hushed up the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ until 13 July, when he announced to the Reichstag that the SA would now serve under the command of the army, which would swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler. Justice would be executed by the SS under the leadership of former chicken farmer Heinrich Himmler, giving the SS unchallenged power and making it Nazi Germany’s most powerful and feared force.
World War II
WWII began on 1 September 1939 with the Nazi attack on Poland. France and Britain declared war on Germany two days later, but even this could not prevent the quick defeat of Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Other countries, including Denmark and Norway, were also soon brought into the Nazi fold.
In June 1941 Germany broke its nonaggression pact with Stalin by attacking the USSR. Though successful at first, Operation Barbarossa quickly ran into problems, culminating in the defeat at Stalingrad (today Volgograd) the following winter, forcing the Germans to retreat. With the Normandy invasion of June 1944, Allied troops arrived in formidable force on the European mainland, supported by unrelenting air raids that reduced Germany’s cities to rubble and the country’s population by 10%. The final Battle of Berlin began in mid-April 1945. More than 1.5 million Soviet soldiers barrelled towards the capital from the east, reaching Berlin on 21 April and encircling it on 25 April. Two days later they were in the city centre, fighting running street battles with the remaining troops, many of them boys and elderly men.
On 30 April the fighting reached the government quarter where Hitler was holed up in his bunker with his long-time mistress Eva Braun, whom he’d married just a day earlier. Finally accepting the inevitability of defeat, the couple killed themselves. As their bodies were burning in the chancellery courtyard, Red Army soldiers raised the Soviet flag above the Reichstag.
On 7 May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally. Peace was signed at the US military headquarters in Reims (France) and at the Soviet military headquarters in Berlin. On 8 May 1945, WWII in Europe officially came to an end.
oThird Reich Sites
Dachau concentration camp, near Munich
Memorium Nuremberg Trials, Nuremberg
Topographie des Terrors, Berlin
East & West
In 1949 the division of Germany – and Berlin – was formalised. The western zones evolved into the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD, Federal Republic of Germany or FRG) with Konrad Adenauer as its first chancellor and Bonn, on the Rhine, as its capital. An economic aid package, dubbed the Marshall Plan, created the basis for West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), which saw the economy grow at an average 8% per year between 1951 and 1961. The recovery was largely engineered by economics minister Ludwig Erhard, who dealt with an acute labour shortage by inviting about 2.3 million foreign workers, mainly from Turkey, Yugoslavia and Italy, to Germany, thereby laying the foundation for today’s multicultural society.
The Soviet zone, meanwhile, grew into the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR, German Democratic Republic or GDR) with East Berlin as its capital and Wilhelm Pieck as its first president. A single party, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED, Socialist Unity Party of Germany), led by party boss Walter Ulbricht, dominated economic, judicial and security policy. In order to suppress any opposition, the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, was established in 1950.
Economically, East Germany stagnated, in large part because of the Soviets’ continued policy of asset stripping and reparation payments. Stalin’s death in 1953 raised hopes for reform but only spurred the GDR government to raise production goals even higher.
The Wall: What Goes Up…
Through the 1950s the economic gulf between the two Germanys widened, prompting hundreds of thousands of East Berliners to seek a future in the West. Eventually, the exodus of mostly young and well-educated East Germans strained the troubled GDR economy so much that – with Soviet consent – its government built a wall to keep them in. Construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War’s most potent symbol, began on the night of 13 August 1961, leaving Berliners stunned. Ensuing protests and demonstrations were ignored. In October 1961, US and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie, reaching the brink of war, but the wall stayed.
…Must Come Down
German reunification came as a surprise to the world and ushered in a new and exciting era. The so-called Wende (turning point, ie the fall of communism) came about as a gradual development that ended in a big bang – the collapse of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
The Germany of today, with 16 unified federal states, was hammered out through a volatile political debate and a series of treaties. A common currency and economic union became realities in July 1990. On 31 August 1990, the Unification Treaty, in which both East and West pledged to create a unified Germany, was signed. In September this was followed by the Two-Plus-Four Treaty, which was signed in Moscow by representatives of East and West Germany, the USSR, France, the UK and the US. This ended postwar occupation zones and fully transferred sovereignty to a united Germany. Formal unification became effective on 3 October 1990 (now Germany’s national holiday) and Germany’s first unified elections were held in December. In 1991, the Bundestag (German parliament) voted in favour of moving the government to Berlin. The city was also reinstated as the German capital, and on 8 September 1994, the last Allied troops stationed in Berlin left the city.
Since Reunification
The single most dominant figure throughout the 1990s was Helmut Kohl. Under his leadership, East German assets were privatised and infrastructure modernised, creating a boom that saw massive growth in the former GDR for the first half of the decade. This was followed by a dramatic slump, creating an eastern Germany that consisted of unification winners and losers. In 1998, a coalition of the SPD and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) parties defeated the CDU/CSU and FDP coalition.
Germany’s National Day
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, so when it came time to pick a date for a public holiday to mark German reunification it seemed only natural that that would be it. Unfortunately, the same date also played key roles in German history on two prior, less joyful, occasions. On this day in 1923 Hitler launched his ill-fated Munich coup, which landed him in jail where he penned Mein Kampf. And in 1938 Nazi thugs vandalised Jewish businesses and synagogues during the infamous Kristallnacht. On a positive note, 9 November was also the day in 1918 when Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, ending German monarchical rule and establishing the first German republic. Still, in the end, Germany’s national holiday was set on the less evocative, but much more tactful, date of 3 October – the anniversary of administrative reunification in 1990.
The New Millennium
The formation of a coalition government of SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens in 1998 marked the first time an environmentalist party had governed nationally anywhere in the world. The rise of the Greens and recently, the democratic socialist Die Linke (The Left), has changed the political landscape of Germany, making absolute majorities difficult to achieve. The 2005 election brought a grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD with Angela Merkel at the helm. Born in the GDR in 1954, the Russian-speaking quantum chemist was the first woman on the job.
The election of 2009 confirmed the trend towards smaller parties with the grand coalition losing considerable votes, allowing the Left to establish itself at the federal level. The trend reversed slightly in 2013 with the big parties regaining some votes and heralding the meteoric rise of a new conservative party, the Euro-skeptic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany). Founded in April 2013, the party advocates for a return to the Deutschmark, radical tax changes and restricted immigration. Although missing the 5% Bundestag threshold, the AfD party gained representation in the European Parliament and in the state parliaments of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia, Hamburg and Bremen.
In July 2015 Frauke Petry, a conservative nationalist was elected party leader. Her strict Islamophobic stance and popularity among sympathisers of the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant PEGIDA (‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’) movement, prompted flocks of more-moderate members to leave the party.
In 2017, Germany handled more asylum applications than the rest of the EU combined. Immigration policy and processing and its draining of government resources is key to the rise of the AfD and PEGIDA. Support for them reached a highpoint in the 2017 elections with the party winning 13.3% of the vote and entering national parliament.
Timeline
100 BC–AD 9
The Romans clash with Germanic tribes until defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest halts Rome’s expansion eastwards.
4th Century
The arrival of Hun horsemen triggers the Great Migration. Germanic tribes are displaced and flee to parts of the Western Roman Empire.
732
The king of the Franks wins the Battle of Tours and stops the progress of Muslims into Western Europe, preserving Christianity in the Reich.
919–1125
Saxon and Salian emperors rule Germany, creating the Holy Roman Empire in 962, reaffirming the precedent established by Charlemagne.
1241
Hamburg and Lübeck sign an agreement to protect each other’s trading routes, creating the basis for the powerful Hanseatic League.
1348–50
The plague wipes out 25% of Europe’s population and pogroms are launched against Jews.
1356
The Golden Bull formalises the election of the kaiser. Archbishops, regional rulers and the count of Palatinate become prince-electors.
1517
Martin Luther’s ideas challenge the selling of indulgences, capturing a mood of disillusionment within the Church.
1618–48
The Thirty Years’ War leaves the population depleted and regions reduced to wasteland. The Reich disintegrates into more than 300 states.
1740–86
Berlin becomes ‘Athens on the Spree’, as Absolutism in Europe gives way to the Enlightenment, heralding a cultural explosion.
1789–1815
The French Revolution and, the Napoleonic Wars sweep away the last remnants of the Middle Ages. Napoleon takes Berlin in 1806.
1806–13
The Holy Roman Empire collapses and Napoleon creates the 16-member Confederation of the Rhine.
1814–15
The post-Napoleon Congress of Vienna redraws the map of Europe, creating in the former Reich the German Alliance, with 35 states.
1848
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is published in London by a group of Germans living in exile in Britain.
1870–71
Bismarck creates a unified Germany, with Prussia at its helm and Berlin as its capital. Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, becomes Kaiser Wilhelm I.
1890–91
Influenced by Marx’s writing, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) adopts its present name.
1914–18
WWI: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey go to war against Britain, France, Italy and Russia. Germany is defeated.
1918–19
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates, and a democratic Weimar Republic is founded. Women receive suffrage and human rights are enshrined in law.
1933
Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. The federal states become powerless, and opposition parties and free-trade unions are banned.
1935
The Nuremberg Laws are enacted. A new law deprives Jews and other ‘non-Aryans’ of German citizenship.
1938
The Munich Agreement allows Hitler to annex the Sudetenland, an ethnic-German region of Czechoslovakia.
1939
WWII: Hitler invades Poland on 1 September. Two days later France and Britain declare war on Germany.
1939–45
Millions of Jews are murdered during the Holocaust and 62 million civilians and soldiers die – 27 million in the Soviet Union alone.
1945
Hitler commits suicide in a Berlin bunker as a defeated Germany surrenders. Germany is split into Allied- and Soviet-occupied zones.
1949
A separate East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR) is established in the Soviet-occupied zone; Berlin is its capital.
1951–61
Ludwig Erhard unleashes West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). The economy averages an annual growth rate of 8%.
1961
On the night of 13 August, the GDR government begins building the Berlin Wall, a 155km-long barrier surrounding West Berlin.
1972
Terrorists murder two competitors and take nine hostage at the Munich Olympics. A botched rescue operation kills all nine.
1989
The Berlin Wall comes down and the reunified city becomes the capital. Communist regimes across Eastern Europe start to fall.
2005
Angela Merkel becomes Germany’s first female chancellor.
2008
The global economic crisis bites into export industries. Banks are propped up by state funds as unemployment and state debt rise.
2015
Germany welcomes around one million refugees. Numbers of asylum seekers continue to climb in subsequent years.
2017
The country marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation with festivals, concerts and special exhibitions across the country.