officially Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; Ger. Bundesrepublik Deutschland), republic, central Europe, bordered on the N by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; on the E by Poland and the Czech Republic; on the S by Austria and Switzerland; and on the W by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The country has an area of 356,733 sq km (137,735 sq mi).

For most of the more than 1000 years of German history, Germany was a geographical term for an area occupied by many states. Unified for the first time in 1871, it was divided after World War II into two countries: West Germany, also known as the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Ger. Deutsche Demokratische Republik). On Oct. 3, 1990, Germany was reunified, as East Germany became part of the FRG.

This article surveys the geography, cultural life, economy, and government of the unified Federal Republic of Germany, along with the history of Germany before 1949 and since 1990. For a detailed discussion of Germany between 1949 and 1990, see West Germany.

LAND AND RESOURCES

Germany consists of three major geographical regions—a lowland plain in the N, an upland zone in the center, and a mountainous area in the S. The lowland region, part of the North German Plain, has a varied topography that includes several river valleys, a large heath (the Lüneburger Heide), and, in E Germany, numerous hollows, many now filled in by lakes. Along the coastline are areas of sand dunes and marshland. Off the coast are several islands, notably the East Frisian Islands, the North Frisian Islands, and Helgoland, in the North Sea; and Fehmarn and the large island of Rügen, in the Baltic. The central upland region, which extends in W Germany below Hannover as far S as the Main R., encompasses a complex terrain of low mountains, river valleys, and well-defined basins. Much of SW Germany is dominated by two branches of the Jura Mts. One branch, the Black Forest, or Schwarzwald, is in the SW, and the other, consisting of the Swabian Jura and the Franconian Jura, sweeps from the SW to the Frankenwald, Oberpfälzer Wald, and other mountains in the SE. In the extreme S are the Bavarian Alps, which contain Germany's loftiest peak, the Zugspitze (2962 m/9718 ft).

Rivers and Lakes.

The most important river of W Germany is the Rhine, which forms part of the border with Switzerland and France before flowing into the Netherlands. Its tributaries in Germany include the Lahn, Main, Mosel, Neckar, and Ruhr rivers. Among the important rivers in the E are the Elbe, which flows to the North Sea, and the Oder, which, along with the smaller Neisse R., forms most of Germany's border with Poland. Germany has few large lakes; the largest is Lake Constance (Bodensee), which is partly in Austria and Switzerland.

Climate.

Germany has a temperate climate; the lowlands of the N are somewhat warmer than the higher elevations in the central and S regions. Average temperatures in January range from about -6° C (about 21° F) in the mountains to about 1.5° C (about 35° F) in the lowlands; in July, average temperatures range from about 18° to 20° C (about 64° to 68° F). Precipitation is heaviest in the S, which yearly gets about 1980 mm (about 78 in) of moisture, much of it in the form of snow. The central uplands get up to about 1525 mm (about 60 in) of precipitation yearly, and the lowlands in the N get less than 760 mm (less than 30 in) of moisture.

Natural Resources.

Forests constitute about 30% of Germany's land area, cropland 34%, and grazing land 15%. The country has rich deposits of bituminous coal, lignite, iron ore, and potash. Smaller amounts of tin, nickel, lead, zinc, silver, crude petroleum, and natural gas are also found.

Plants and Animals.

Coniferous trees, especially spruce and other pines, predominate, but numerous deciduous species also flourish, including beech, birch, oak, and walnut. Vineyards cover many of the hillsides along the Rhine, Mosel, and Main rivers. Western Germany is noted for its orchards, and many different mosses and flowering plants are found throughout the country.

Indigenous wildlife is limited. Many deer live in the forests, which also shelter some bears, wild boars, wolves, foxes, wildcats, hares, weasels, and badgers. Among the few reptiles is one poisonous snake, the adder. Finches, geese, and other migratory birds cross the country in great numbers. Herring and cod are found in the coastal waters of the North and Baltic seas, and carp, catfish, and trout inhabit German rivers and streams.

POPULATION

More than 93% of the population is of German ancestry (see GERMANIC PEOPLES,). Germans consist mostly of two groupings of the Caucasoid race. The predominant Alpine type is concentrated in the central and S regions; persons of the Teutonic grouping live principally in the N.

The largest immigrant communities come from Turkey, Italy, Greece, Poland, Spain, and the former Yugoslav republics. Many immigrants came as “guest workers” with their families; more recent newcomers, especially from the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, arrived as refugees in the early 1990s. In 1993, facing a surge of immigration and of agitation against foreigners, the German parliament passed legislation drastically tightening the requirements for political asylum; in a reversal of policy, the citizenship laws were eased in 1999. Overall, the population of Germany was growing at a rate of less than 0.1% in the late 1990s.

Population Characteristics.

Germany had an estimated population in 1998 of 82.1 million, more than that of any other European country except Russia. The population density was about 230 persons per sq km (about 596 per sq mi). The W part of Germany is much more densely settled than the E region, which constitutes about 30% of Germany's land area but has only about 20% of the total population. More than 85% of all Germans lived in urban areas in the late 1990s.

Political Divisions.

Germany is divided into 16 states (Länder), each with its own constitution and elected legislature. Ten of the states belonged to West Germany: Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, and Schleswig-Holstein. With the unification of Germany in 1990, the Land (State) of Berlin included both West Berlin and East Berlin and its constitution, which from 1950 to 1991 had applied only to West Berlin, became valid for the reunified city-state. Five eastern states—Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia—also entered the Federal Republic.

Principal Cities.

More than 80 German cities have populations exceeding 100,000. Berlin (pop., 1996 est., 3,459,000) is Germany's capital, largest city, and leading cultural and industrial center. Other important cities with their estimated 1992 populations include Hamburg (1,668,757), Munich (1,229,052), and Cologne (956,690).

Language.

German is the official language and is spoken by nearly all Germans (see GERMAN LANGUAGE, ). There are several regional dialects. Members of the Sorb (see WENDS,) minority in E Germany speak a Slavic language. See also [GERMAN LITERATURE,.

Religion.

Freedom of religious worship is constitutionally guaranteed. There is no state church, but religious groups may gain special recognition from the government by organizing as independent public corporations. Churches receive grants from the states, which also collect a “church tax” on their behalf. About 37% of the people are classified as Protestants; the overwhelming majority belong to congregations affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Germany, a federation of Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches formed after World War II. Most Protestants live in the N. At least 35% of the people are Roman Catholics, concentrated in the Rhineland and in Bavaria. More than 2% of the people, mostly Turks, follow Islam. Jews numbered some 530,000 in Germany before World War II; in the early 1990s, however, there were only about 40,000 Jews, one-fourth of them living in Berlin.

EDUCATION AND CULTURE

Unlike English and French cultural life, which has long been centered in the capital cities of London and Paris, German cultural life has traditionally flourished in many cities. For centuries, in the capitals of many independent German states, rulers encouraged art, music, theater, and scholarship as expressions of their power. Berlin was the cultural as well as the political capital of a unified Germany from 1871 to 1945 and resumed that role in the 1990s.

Education.

Virtually the entire adult population is literate. School attendance is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 18, with full-time attendance required for at least nine years. About 80% of children between the ages of 3 and 6 attend kindergarten; most kindergartens are operated by churches, other charitable groups, or local authorities. Although the Basic Law vests responsibility for education in the individual state governments, an interstate agreement signed in 1971 ensures harmony on basic school policies. Since unification in 1990, the school system in E Germany has gradually been restructured to bring it into conformity with the W.

Primary, secondary, and vocational schools.

In the early 1990s more than 9.3 million students attended some 43,900 elementary and secondary schools, and nearly 2.5 million students were enrolled in some 8950 vocational and teacher-training institutions. Virtually all students attend four years of primary school (Grundschule). On completion of the Grundschule at about the age of 10, students take extensive tests, the results of which largely determine their subsequent schooling and vocation. Among the available options are the junior secondary school (Hauptschule), which generally leads to vocational training; the intermediate school (Realschule), which leads to more advanced technical training or a career in business or administration; the grammar or senior high school (Gymnasium), which often leads to higher education, including university study; or the comprehensive school, which combines vocational, commercial, and academic programs. Some states offer other secondary school options. Most vocational programs involve both academic instruction and on-the-job training through apprenticeships.

Higher education.

Nearly 1.9 million students were enrolled in more than 200 higher educational institutions in the early 1990s. University education, which in the late 1950s was open to fewer than 10% of secondary school graduates, is now available for nearly one-third, and more than 20 new universities have been established since 1960. Among the most historic institutions are Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg (1386), Leipzig University (1409), and Rostock University (1419).

Museums and Libraries.

As the 1990s began, Germany had more than 3000 museums and at least 24,000 libraries. The outstanding art collections of the kings of Prussia are found in Berlin, where the State Museum of Prussian Cultural Treasures supervises collections of Greek and Roman antiquities; Egyptian, Far Eastern, Indian, and Islamic art; and paintings by European masters. The collections of the Bavarian rulers form the Bavarian State Art Galleries in Munich, with old masters in the world-famous Alte Pinakotek, 19th-century European art in the Neue Pinakotek, and 20th-century European and American art in the State Gallery of Modern Art. The State Art Collection in Dresden, formerly owned by the rulers of Saxony, includes a celebrated gallery of old masters and fine collections of porcelain and other decorative arts. The German National Museum in Nuremberg offers a splendid collection of artifacts, artworks, and manuscripts. Outstanding science museums are located in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich.

East and West Germany each had a national library (Deutsche Bibliothek), the former in Leipzig and the latter in Frankfurt; plans to merge the two collections are currently under way. Large research libraries include the German State Library in Berlin and the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

ECONOMY

With its highly educated work force, sophisticated technology, stable currency, and comprehensive social services, Germany has one of the world's most prosperous and productive economies. The annual gross national product was estimated at more than $23,000 per capita in the early 1990s. Manufacturing remains the backbone of the economy, contributing 27% of the gross domestic product; the country is a leading international supplier of high-tech industrial equipment. Germany is one of the world's great trading nations and is also a major provider of financial and other services. The annual government budget in the early 1990s included $918 billion in revenue and $972 billion in spending.

The major challenge facing Germany in the 1990s was the integration of the economies of the W and E regions. After the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic, the united Federal Republic of Germany faced the need to make massive investments to improve industrial, communication, and transportation facilities in the E; to ease the transition of E Germany from a centralized system to a market economy; and to harmonize the economy of the E with policies established by the European Community (now EUROPEAN UNION; q.v.; EU), of which West Germany was a founding member. By 1992, annual investment from W Germany peaked at nearly half of E Germany's gross domestic product. Nevertheless, in the mid-1990s, living standards remained lower in the E than in the W, and unemployment was much higher.

Labor.

The German labor force in the early 1990s comprised an estimated 35.5 million people, of whom about 84% were employed in the W region. The main labor organization was the German Trade Union Federation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, or DGB), with more than 11 million members in 16 constituent unions. A distinctive feature of labor relations in Germany is the system of codetermination. Under this system, in many large enterprises, most notably in the mining and steel industries, workers and management have equal say in establishing the firm's major policies.

Agriculture.

Although highly productive, especially in the W, farming plays a declining role in the German economy. In the early 1990s W Germany had about 580,000 farms, more than 70% of which were smaller than 50 ha (124 acres). At the time of unification, most of the farmland in E Germany was concentrated in about 5100 large collectives; within three years, most of these had been converted to cooperative societies, partnerships, or joint-stock companies.

Leading crops in the early 1990s (with output in metric tons) were sugar beets (27.2 million), wheat (15.5 million), barley (12.2 million), potatoes (10.9 million), rapeseed (2.6 million), rye (2.4 million), and maize (2.1 million). Large quantities of oats, vegetables, grapes, apples, and other fruits were also produced. Livestock included 26.5 million hogs, 16.2 million cattle, 2.4 million sheep, and 104 million poultry.

Forestry and Fishing.

The German timber industry satisfies about two-thirds of domestic demand, and the country is also a major exporter of forest products. Annual production of roundwood in the early 1990s totaled 44.9 million cu m (1.6 billion cu ft), of which about 48% went for lumber and 30% for pulp. The quality of the country's forests has declined in recent decades; a 1992 report estimated that one-fourth of all trees were badly damaged, chiefly because of air pollution.

The fishing industry employed about 48,000 people in the early 1990s. Most German fishing vessels operate in the North and Baltic seas and in the Atlantic Ocean in the vicinity of the British Isles and Greenland. The total annual catch in the early 1990s was about 300,200 metric tons. Herring, mackerel, cod, trout, carp, mussels, and shrimp were among the leading species caught.

Mining.

Except for coal, lignite, iron ore, and potash, mineral resources are limited, and many industrial raw materials must be imported. Mineral production in the early 1990s (in metric tons) included bituminous coal, 72.2 million; lignite, 241.8 million; potash, 30.4 million; iron ore, 180,000; zinc, 14,300; and lead, 2100. Production of crude petroleum amounted to 23.7 million barrels, representing only about 3% of annual consumption. The output of natural gas was 16.1 billion cu m (569 billion cu ft).

Manufacturing.

Germany is one of the world's great manufacturing centers, with some 52,000 industrial enterprises employing more than 7.5 million people. Motor vehicle manufacturing is a dominant industry, led by such internationally famous firms as DaimlerChrysler AG (which is a result of the 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz and the U.S. Chrysler Corp.) and Volkswagen; each year, German automakers normally turn out at least 4 million vehicles, of which about half are exported. Mechanical engineering firms produce an estimated 17,000 different items; about 40% of the annual output is sold abroad. Other major industries produce chemicals and pharmaceuticals, electrical and electronic goods, processed foods, precision instruments, clothing and textiles, and iron and steel. Industrial output in the early 1990s included steel ingots, 39.3 million metric tons; cement, 37.3 million metric tons; and clocks and watches, 24.4 million.

Energy.

In the early 1990s Germany had an installed electricity-generating capacity of 123.2 million kw. The annual output of electricity totaled 573.8 billion kwh, of which 68% was generated by conventional thermal installations burning fossil fuels, 28% by nuclear power plants, and 4% by hydroelectric facilities.

Currency and Banking.

The monetary systems of East and West Germany were unified as of July 1990. On Jan. 1, 1999, Germany adopted the EURO, (q.v.), the EU's common currency, at a fixed conversion rate of 1.95583 marks to 1 euro. The national currency, the deutsche mark, or DM, consisting of 100 pfennigs, ceased to be the national currency on Jan. 1, 2002; euro notes and coins were expected to replace the circulation of the mark at the end of February 2002. The Deutsche Bundesbank (1957), headquartered in Frankfurt, is a full participant in the European System of Central Banks (see EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK), which also has its headquarters in Frankfurt. Because of Germany's central role in international trade and finance, policy decisions by the Bundesbank have had a major impact on the world economy.

The largest of Germany's many private commercial banks include Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, and Commerzbank. Many savings banks and credit institutions also function. The Deutsche Börse, based in Frankfurt, is the nation's leading stock exchange.

Foreign Trade and Tourism.

In the early 1990s annual exports totaled $406.9 billion, and imports amounted to $374 billion. During this period, Germany ranked second only to the U.S. in the value of its annual exports; unlike the U.S., however, Germany enjoyed a favorable trade balance, because its imports were much lower. Motor vehicles, machinery, chemicals, and electrical and electronic products are among the leading exports; the principal imports include foodstuffs, textiles, crude petroleum, and other minerals. More than 70% of German trade is with other European countries, chiefly with other members of the EU. Leading trade partners include France, Great Britain, the U.S., Italy, and Japan. German firms have invested heavily in other countries, notably in the U.S.

More than 14 million tourists a year visited Germany in the early 1990s. Receipts from tourism were more than $10 billion yearly. Germans traveling abroad, however, spent more than $35 billion.

Transportation.

At the time of unification, W Germany had a highly developed transport system. Transportation in E Germany, however, was much less efficient, and because the government of East Germany had long restricted contact, links between the two zones were lacking. In June 1993 the German government launched an ambitious 20-year plan to modernize rail, road, and waterway systems throughout the country.

As the 1990s began, Germany's rail network consisted of about 42,000 km (about 26,100 mi) of track, approximately two-thirds of which was in the W region and one-third in the E. High-speed rail service was inaugurated in W Germany in 1991. The separate East and West German state railway companies were merged into Deutche Bahn A.G. (German Railways) in 1994, as a step toward privatization.

About 39 million passenger cars and 6 million other motor vehicles were registered in Germany in the early 1990s. The network of primary and secondary roads extends about 226,000 km (about 140,400 mi), including more than 11,000 km (more than 6835 mi) of limited-access expressways (Autobahnen).

Germany's principal seaports are Hamburg, Bremerhaven, and Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea, and Lübeck and Rostock on the Baltic. The merchant fleet in the early 1990s consisted of more than 900 vessels totaling about 5.3 million gross registered tons. About 7300 km (about 4535 mi) of inland waterways are navigable, including Germany's share of the Main-Danube Canal, which was opened in 1992. Duisburg, on the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, ranks as one of the largest inland ports in the world.

Airports in Germany are run as private companies under government supervision; the air traffic control system has also been privatized. The leading international airport, near Frankfurt, is one of Europe's busiest; in Berlin, the existing Schönefeld facility will be the site of the huge new Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport. Germany's national airline, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, offers extensive domestic and worldwide services.

Communications.

Postal and telecommunications services in Germany, formerly owned and operated by the government, were privatized in the mid-1990s. Deutsche Post AG provides postal delivery services, and Deutsche Telekom AG is a major supplier of telephone, telex, cable television, and other telecommunications services. In the late 1990s, Germany had 46.5 million main telephone lines, nearly 14 million cellular telephone subscribers, 25 million personal computers, 6 million INTERNET, (q.v.) users, 47.6 million televisions, 17.6 million cable television subscribers, and more than 11.5 million home satellite antennas. The country is also a leading exporter of telecommunications equipment and services.

Both public and private broadcasters provide radio and television programming. The two main television channels are operated by ARD, a coordinating body for 11 regional broadcasting corporations, and ZDF, established by agreement among the states. The members of ARD also operate a third channel for regional television programming. Radio Deutsche Welle (Voice of Germany) broadcasts daily in 40 languages via shortwave to Europe and worldwide.

Some 370 daily newspapers with a combined circulation of about 25 million were published in Germany in the late 1990s. Among the most influential national newspapers are the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau, both published in Frankfurt; Die Welt of Berlin; and Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung. About 130 newspapers provided online services via the Internet. Of nearly 10,000 periodicals, the best known include the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the illustrated weeklies Stern and Bunte.

GOVERNMENT

Intended as a temporary framework for democratic government, the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) of 1949 served as the constitution of West Germany. Amended in 1990, when East Berlin and five newly established states in the former East Germany became part of the Federal Republic, the Basic Law continues to serve as a constitution for the unified German nation. Government institutions in Germany today generally follow the West German precedent.

Executive.

The head of state is the federal president, who is elected to a 5-year term by a federal convention consisting of the Bundestag (the lower house of the parliament) and an equal number of delegates chosen by the state legislatures. The president has little influence on government. Executive authority resides with the federal government headed by the federal chancellor, who is elected by an absolute majority of the Bundestag and appoints the other ministers. The chancellor is responsible to parliament and must enjoy the confidence of a majority in the lower house.

Legislature.

The German parliament consists of two houses—the Bundestag, or lower house, and the Bundesrat, or federal council—both of which were expanded in 1990 to include representatives of E Germany. The 614 members of the Bundestag are popularly elected to terms of up to four years by citizens aged 18 or over. Members are chosen by a mixed system of direct voting and proportional representation. The Bundesrat consists of 69 delegates chosen by the state governments. Each state has between three and six delegates, depending on population.

Some legislation may be passed by simple majority vote of the Bundestag, but more than half of all bills—and all measures affecting the vital interests of the states—require the assent of the Bundesrat. In most cases, the Bundestag may override a veto by the Bundesrat. Constitutional amendments, however, require a two-thirds majority vote by both houses.

Judiciary.

The highest tribunal under the Basic Law is the Federal Constitutional Court, which sits in Karlsruhe; half its judges are elected by the Bundestag, and half by the Bundesrat. Other superior courts include the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Financial Court, the Federal Labor Court, and the Federal Social Court. Regional and local courts operate in each state. The death penalty is forbidden by the Basic Law.

Local Government.

The 16 states have the power to levy certain taxes, formulate educational and cultural policies, and maintain police. The states also are responsible for administering much of the legislation enacted by the federal government. States are divided into rural and urban districts, which are subdivided into more than 16,000 communes.

Political Parties.

Most of the major political parties in Germany are those that dominated West German politics between 1949 and 1990. In the elections for the Bundestag in September 2005, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), together won 35.2% of the popular vote and 226 seats in the Bundestag. Other leading groups included the Social Democratic party of Germany (SPD), with 34.2% of the vote and 222 seats; the liberal Free Democratic party (FDP), 9.8% and 61 seats; the Left party, 8.7% and 54 seats; and the Greens, 8.1% and 51 seats. Minor parties shared the remaining 4% of the popular vote.

Health and Welfare.

Germany has a comprehensive social-insurance system, including sickness, accident, old-age, disability, and unemployment coverage. The pension program is funded by compulsory contributions from employees and employers. Especially in W Germany, health conditions and facilities are among the finest in the world. In the early 2000s Germany had about 298,000 physicians and more than 550,000 hospital beds. Average life expectancy from birth in the mid-2000s was 82 years for women and 76 for men; the infant mortality rate was 4.2 per 1000 live births.

Defense.

Military service is by conscription for a period of 12 months. The Basic Law explicitly recognizes the right of conscientious objection. In the early 2000s the German armed forces, known as the Bundeswehr, had a combined strength of 284,500: 191,500 in the army, 25,600 in the navy, and 67,400 in the air force.

With the unification of Germany in 1990, the National People's Army—the military organization of the German Democratic Republic—was disbanded, and the united Federal Republic of Germany became a full member of the NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (q.v.; NATO); by 1994 the process of withdrawing some 340,000 troops and 210,000 dependents and civilian personnel that the USSR had stationed in East Germany was complete. More than 75,000 U.S. troops were based in Germany in the mid-2000s.

International Organizations.

In addition to its participation in NATO and the EU, Germany is a member of the UNITED NATIONS (UN), the ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT, the ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE, the WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (qq.v.), the Council of Europe, and numerous other international bodies.

HISTORY

As a geographical area, Germany consists of three regions—the northern plain, the central uplands, and a mountainous area in the south. It is crossed by the Rhine, Weser, Elbe, and Oder rivers flowing north and by the Danube flowing east. Lacking geographical boundaries except for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, it was in the path of migrations and invasions from the east and west, and the fluidity of the population helped delay German unification.

Also working against national unity was the ethnic variety of the “Germans.” Germans of Roman descent shared the west and southwest with those of Celtic ancestry, who also lived in the south. Those of Germanic, or Teutonic, origin occupied the north, center, south, and east, while Baltic peoples inhabited the northeast and Slavs the east and southeast. Generally, the north and east later became Protestant, and the south and west remained Roman Catholic.

These differences encouraged devotion to particular homelands, on the one hand, and antipathy toward neighboring groups, on the other. Germans sometimes engaged in divisive civil wars but at other times merged their differences in supranational empires. Individualistic, and yet often submissive to authority, they were slow to develop effective representative government.

ORIGINS OF THE GERMANS

Archaeological evidence shows that what is now Germany was inhabited from earliest times.

Stone Age Peoples.

During the Old Stone Age, the German forests were thinly populated by wandering bands of hunters and gatherers. They belonged to the earliest forms of Homo sapiens, such as Heidelberg man, who lived about 400,000 years ago. Somewhat later, more advanced forms of Homo sapiens appeared, as exemplified by skeletal finds near Steinheim, some 300,000 years old, and near Ehringsdorf, from about 100,000 years ago. Another human type was Neanderthal man, found near Düsseldorf, who lived about 100,000 years ago. The most recent type, which appeared by 40,000 bc, was Cro-Magnon man, a member of Homo sapiens sapiens, essentially of the same group as modern Europeans.

During the New Stone Age, the indigenous hunters encountered farming peoples from the more advanced southwest Asia, who were migrating up the Danube Valley into central Germany about 4500 bc. They mixed and settled in villages to raise crops and breed stock. Villagers of this Danubian culture lived with their animals in gabled wooden houses, made pottery, and traded with Mediterranean peoples for stone and flint axes and shells. As their hand-hoed fields wore out, the groups moved on, often returning years later.

Bronze Age Peoples.

The Bronze Age began in central Germany, Bohemia, and Austria about 2500 bc with the working of copper and tin deposits by prospectors from the eastern Mediterranean. About 2300 bc, new waves of migrating peoples arrived, probably from southern Russia. These battle-ax–wielding Indo-Europeans were the ancestors of the Germanic tribes that settled in northern and central Germany, the Baltic and Slavic peoples in the east, and the Celtic peoples in the south and west. The central and southern groups mixed with the so-called Bell-Beaker people, who moved east from Spain and Portugal about 2000 bc. The Bell-Beaker folk, probably Indo-Europeans, were skilled metalworkers. They developed a thriving Bronze Age culture in Germany and traded amber from the Baltic coast for bronze, pottery, and beads from the Mediterranean.

From 1800 to 400 bc, Celtic peoples in southern Germany and Austria developed a sequence of advanced metalworking cultures—Urnfield, Hallstatt, and La Tène—each of which spread throughout Europe. They introduced the use of iron for tools and weapons. The La Tène Celts did fine metalwork and used ox-drawn plows and wheeled vehicles. The Germanic tribes absorbed much Celtic culture and eventually displaced the Celts themselves.

Germans and Romans.

From the 2d century bc to the 5th century ad the Germanic and Celtic tribes, constantly pressed by migrations from the north and east, were in contact with the Romans. Roman accounts by Julius Caesar and Tacitus describe these encounters.

The Cimbri and Teutons, about to invade Italy, were defeated by the Roman general Gaius Marius in 101 and 102 bc. The Suevi and other tribes in Gaul (modern France), west of the Rhine, were subdued by Julius Caesar around 50 bc. The Romans tried unsuccessfully to extend their rule to the Elbe, and the emperors held the border at the Rhine and the Danube. Between the two rivers they erected a limes, a line of fortifications to keep out raiding tribes.

In the 2d century ad the Romans prevented confederations of Franks, Alamanni, and Burgundians outside the empire from crossing the Rhine. But in the 4th and 5th centuries, the pressure proved too much for the weakened Romans. The Huns, sweeping in from Asia, set off waves of migration, during which the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, Lombards, and other Germanic tribes overran the empire.

BEGINNINGS OF A GERMAN STATE

In the late 5th century the Frankish chieftain Clovis defeated the Romans, and he established a kingdom that included most of Gaul and southwestern Germany. He converted his subjects, believers in the Arian heresy, to orthodox Christianity.

Carolingian Germany.

Clovis's work was carried on in the 8th century by Charlemagne, who fought the Slavs south of the Danube, annexed southern Germany, and ferociously subdued and converted the pagan Saxons in the northwest. As champion of Christianity and supporter of the papacy against the restive people of Rome, Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III in Rome in 800. This milestone event revived the Roman imperial tradition in the west, but it also set a precedent for the dependence of the emperors on papal approval.

The Carolingian Empire was based on the social structure of the late Roman Empire. The official language of the court and the church was Latin, but Franks in Gaul adopted the Latinate vernacular that became French, and Franks and other Germanic tribes in the east spoke various languages that became German. The only relic of Old High German is the Hildebrandslied (Lay of Hildebrand), a fragmentary 8th-century poem, based on early pagan heroic tales, about the tragic duel between a father and son.

Carolingian rulers encouraged missionary work among the Germans. St. Willibrord founded the monastery of Echternach (now in Luxembourg), and St. Boniface founded Reichenau and Fulda and reformed the Frankish church. Non-Frankish Germans, however, retained much pagan belief beneath their newly acquired faith. The Heliand, a 9th-century epic, depicts Christ as a Saxon warrior king.

East Francia.

The Carolingian Empire, unwieldy and prey to tribal dissension, did not long survive Charlemagne's death in 814. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), the empire was divided among his three grandsons. One received West Francia (modern France). Another got the imperial title and an area running from the North Sea through Lotharingia (Lorraine) and Burgundy to Italy. The third, Louis the German, received East Francia (modern Germany). The Treaty of Mersen (870) divided the middle kingdom, with Lotharingia going to East Francia and the rest to West Francia. In 881 Charles the Fat of East Francia, heir of Louis the German, received the imperial title. Six years later he was deposed by Arnulf, the last Carolingian emperor to be officially crowned.

The Tribal Duchies.

By the 10th century East Francia was being buffeted by new waves of pagan Danes, Magyars, and Moravians from the north and east and was virtually torn apart by rival tribes. The Carolingians had granted tribal military leaders (dukes) and appointed officials (counts and margraves) lands as temporary fiefs for their services to the state, and many of the high clergy had also received fiefs.

As royal authority declined, these feudal lords, or princes, provided local government and defense. The secular lords gradually made their fiefs hereditary. The greatest of them were the rulers of five stem (tribal) duchies—Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine. Lesser warriors joined princely retinues out of tribal loyalty and in exchange for smaller grants of land and other gifts. Common people lost the right to bear arms. They worked the fields of warriors and churchmen in return for protection and a share of the crops. Thus, the Carolingian governmental system blended with the German tradition of free tribesmen to form a society in which a military nobility was supported by an agricultural peasantry of freemen and serfs.

By ancient German tradition, the kings were elected. Because no noble family wanted to be subject to another family or to a strong king, weak kings were often chosen, and none could safely assume the loyalty of his nobles. These conditions delayed for centuries the consolidation of a strong German state.

EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Medieval German kings had three major concerns. One was checking the rebellious princes—usually with the help of churchmen. The second was controlling Italy and being crowned emperor of the West by the pope, a policy considered an essential part of the Carolingian heritage. The third was expansion to the north and east.

The Saxon Kings.

When the last Carolingian died without an heir, the Franks and Saxons elected Conrad, duke of Franconia, their king; he proved incompetent. After his death in 918 they chose the Saxon duke Henry I, the Fowler, a sober, practical soldier, who made peace with a rival king chosen by the Bavarians, defeated Magyars and Slavs, and regained Lorraine.

Otto I, the Great.

At Henry's death in 936, the princes elected his son Otto I, who combined extraordinary forcefulness, dignity, and military prowess with great diplomatic skill and genuine religious faith. Determined to create a strong centralized monarchy, Otto gave the duchies to his relatives and then broke them up into nonhereditary fiefs granted to bishops and abbots. By nominating these churchmen and subjecting them to the royal court, he ensured their loyalty. This Ottonian system of government through alliance with the German state church was carried much further by his successors.

Otto also had to defend his realm from outside pressures. In the west he strengthened his hold on Lorraine and gained influence over Burgundy (Arles). In the north and east he defeated the Danes and Slavs, and he permanently broke the power of the Magyars (Hungarians) at the Battle of the Lechfeld in 955. Otto established the archbishopric of Magdeburg (968) and other sees as centers of civilization in the conquered lands. Germans settled these regions.

Wanting to emulate Charlemagne as the divinely sanctioned emperor of Christendom, Otto began the disastrous policy of German entanglement in Italy. The temptation was the greater because Italy was a rich land and a scene of feudal disorder and Saracen invasions. When Adelaide (931?–99), widowed queen of the Lombards, asked Otto for help against her captor, Berengar II (c. 900–66), king of Italy, Otto invaded Italy in 951, married her, and took her dead husband's title.

The papacy at this time was struggling to hold its land against encroaching nobles from the north and Byzantine Greeks and Saracens from the south. When Pope John XII appealed to Otto for aid against Berengar, Otto invaded Italy a second time, defeated Berengar, and was crowned emperor by the pope in 962. By a treaty called the Ottonian Privilege, Otto guaranteed the pope's claim to papal lands, and all future papal candidates had to swear fealty to the emperor.

Later Saxon kings.

Otto's successors in the 10th and 11th centuries continued his German and Italian policies as best they could. Otto II established the Eastern March (Austria) under the Babenbergs as a military outpost but was defeated by the Saracens in his efforts to secure southern Italy. The pious Otto III supported the Benedictine reform movement originating in Cluny, Burgundy, which encouraged a more austere, disciplined life. The childless Henry II, gentle and devout, also encouraged the Cluniac movement and sent out missionaries from his court in the new bishopric of Bamberg.

The Salian Kings.

For 100 years (1024–1125) German kings were chosen from the Salian line, which was related to the Saxons. The Salians brought the empire to its height.

High tide of empire.

Conrad II, a clever and ruthless ruler, reasserted royal authority over princely opposition by making the fiefs of lesser nobles hereditary and by appointing as officials and soldiers ministerials, lower-class men responsible directly to him. He seized Burgundy, strengthened his hold on northern Italy, and became overlord of Poland.

Conrad's son Henry III, the Black, was the first undisputed king of Germany. A pious visionary, he introduced to a Germany torn by civil strife the Cluny-inspired Truce of God, a respite from war lasting from Wednesday night to Monday morning, and tried in vain to extend it to a permanent peace. He ended the payment by new bishops of tribute to the Crown (simony), although he still invested churchmen, who remained his vassals. During his reign he deposed three rival popes and created four new ones, notably the reform-minded Leo IX.

Henry IV.

While still a child, Henry IV succeeded his father, Henry III, in 1056. During his mother's regency, long-restive princes annexed much royal land; cities, popes, and Normans controlled Italy; and the Lateran synod of 1059 declared that only cardinals could canonically elect the pope. Wily, opportunistic, and headstrong in an era of violence and treachery, as ruler Henry sought to recover lost imperial power. His efforts to retrieve crown lands aroused the Saxons, who resented the Salian kings. He crushed a Saxon rebellion in 1075 and proceeded to confiscate land, thus intensifying their enmity.

Henry's control of the clergy embroiled him with the militant reform pope Gregory VII, who wanted to free the church from secular bondage. When Gregory forbade lay investiture of churchmen, Henry had him deposed by the Synod of Worms in 1076. The pope promptly excommunicated Henry and released his subjects from their oath of loyalty to him. To keep his crown, Henry cleverly sought the pope at Canossa in the Apennines in January 1077, where, after three days of humble penitence, he was forgiven. The princes, however, elected a rival king, Rudolf of Swabia (fl. 1057–80). The result was nearly 20 years of civil war. In 1080 Gregory excommunicated Henry again and recognized Rudolf. Deposing Gregory, Henry marched on Rome, installed the antipope Clement III (c. 1025–1100), and was crowned emperor in 1084. Henry returned to Germany to continue the civil war against a new rival king (Rudolf had died in 1080). Finally, betrayed and imprisoned by his son Henry, the emperor was forced to abdicate.

Compromise.

The treacherous, brutal, and greedy Henry V vainly continued his father's struggle for supremacy. Suffering military defeats, he lost control of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia. Despite the support of churchmen, ministerials, and the towns, he could not suppress the princes, who forced the weary emperor and Pope Callistus II to compromise on investiture. They accepted the Concordat of Worms (1122), which stipulated that clerical elections in Germany were to take place in the imperial presence without simony and that the emperor was to invest the candidate with the symbols of his temporal office before a bishop invested him with the spiritual ones. The pope, however, had the better of the bargain, and the rivalry between empire and papacy took on new dimensions.

Early Medieval Society.

German kings had no fixed capital, but traveled unceasingly about their realm. They had no income beyond that from their family lands and gifts from churchmen. Feudalism was the rule. The great lords, theoretically vassals of the king, in fact usurped royal rights to build castles and administer justice. The vast majority of common people lived on country manors belonging to nobles or churchmen. The few cities, such as Trier and Cologne, were chiefly Roman foundations or imperial fortifications. There, merchants, artisans, and uprooted peasants settled as free citizens under the authority of a prince. The cities also sheltered Jews, who were not allowed to hold land.

The clergy, which included many nobles, spread the faith, provided education, and carried on the functions of government. Monasteries such as Reichenau, Regensburg, Fulda, Echternach, and Saint Gall became centers of scholarship. Monks wrote Latin works such as the Walthariuslied (c. 930; Lay of Walter, 1858), based on a German legend, and translated biblical and other Christian texts into Old High German. Their illuminated manuscripts with flat, dignified images imitated the art of classical antiquity and Byzantium. Churches, notably Saint Michael at Hildesheim and the cathedrals of Mainz, Speyer, and Worms, were massive, stone-vaulted basilicas with towers and small, round-arched windows. Their walls were adorned with painted murals and expressive sculpture in wood and bronze.

HIGH MIDDLE AGES

In the 12th and 13th centuries Germany and Italy were rent by rivalry between two princely families. The Hohenstaufen, or Waiblingen, of Swabia, known as Ghibellines in Italy, held the German and imperial crowns. The Welfs of Bavaria and Saxony, known as Guelphs in Italy, were allied with the papacy.

Henry V died childless in 1125. The princes, avoiding the principle of heredity, passed over his nephews, Frederick (1090–1147) and Conrad Hohenstaufen, to choose Lothair, duke of Saxony. As emperor, Lothair II revived German efforts to convert and dominate the east. To assert his authority in Italy, he made two expeditions supporting the pope, who crowned him in 1133. In Germany he fought a civil war with the Hohenstaufen princes, who refused to accept him as emperor.

The Hohenstaufen Kings.

At Lothair's death the princes avoided his powerful Welf son-in-law and heir, Henry the Proud ( 1108–39), lord of Bavaria and Saxony. Instead, they chose Conrad Hohenstaufen. Civil war erupted again, this time between the weak but charming Conrad III and the Welf dukes Henry the Proud and his son Henry the Lion. It continued while Conrad led the ill-fated Second Crusade and was paralleled by the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict in Italy. The struggle in Germany was temporarily resolved at Conrad's death by the election of his nephew Frederick, a Hohenstaufen born of a Welf mother.

Frederick I, Barbarossa.

Handsome and intelligent, warlike, just, and charming, Frederick Barbarossa was the ideal medieval Christian king. Regarding himself as the successor of Augustus, Charlemagne, and Otto the Great, he took the title Holy Roman emperor and spent most of his reign shuttling between Germany and Italy trying to restore imperial glory in both.

In the north he joined Germany and Burgundy by marrying (1156) Beatrice (d. 1184), heiress to Burgundy. He declared an imperial peace; to ensure it, he placated the Welfs by recognizing Henry the Lion as duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and for balance he made Austria a duchy. But when Henry refused to contribute troops to a critical Italian campaign, Frederick and jealous princes exiled him as a traitor. Henry's duchies were split up, Bavaria going to the Wittelsbach family.

In the south, Frederick made six expeditions to Italy to assert full imperial authority over the Lombard city-states and the popes. On his first trip he was crowned (1155) emperor. On his second, he had the Diet of Roncaglia (1158) declare his rights, and he installed podestas (imperial representatives) in the cities. Some cities had Ghibelline sympathies, but most objected to being ruled and taxed by uncouth, greedy foreigners. The popes needed imperial support against a Roman rising, but they believed that their spiritual office gave them sovereignty over the emperors. Also, they wanted to maintain independent control of the Papal States. Consequently, some cities revolted against imperial authority and formed the Lombard League in alliance with Pope Alexander III. Frederick reacted by creating an antipope. On his next two trips, Ghibelline cities joined Guelph cities in a revived league and threw out the podestas. Alexander, who had excommunicated Frederick, fled to his Norman allies in Sicily, and Frederick captured (1166) Rome.

During his fifth invasion of Italy, lacking the support of Henry the Lion, Frederick was defeated by the league at the Battle of Legnano (1176). As a result, the Peace of Constance (1183) recognized the autonomy of the cities, which remained only nominally subject to the emperor. Stubbornly, Frederick made a last trip in which he gained new support among the quarrelsome cities. He died leading the Third Crusade.

Henry VI.

More ambitious even than his father, Henry VI wanted to dominate the known world. To secure peace in Germany, he put down a rebellion by the returned exile Henry the Lion and then restored him to power. He forced the northern Italian cities to submit to him and seized Sicily from a usurping Norman king. Intending to create an empire in the Mediterranean, he exacted tribute from North Africa and the weak Byzantine emperor. Henry died suddenly in 1197 while planning a crusade to the Holy Land.

The empire immediately fell apart. Henry's infant son, Frederick II, inherited Sicily, but northern Italy reasserted its independence. The Germans refused to accept a child or make the Crown hereditary in the Hohenstaufen line. Once more civil war raged as two elected kings—the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia and the Welf Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion—struggled for the Crown. When Otto invaded Italy, Pope Innocent III secured the election of Frederick II on the promise that Frederick would give up Sicily so as not to surround the pope.

Frederick II, Stupor Mundi.

Outstandingly accomplished in many fields, the new king was called Stupor Mundi (“wonder of the world”). He was gracious and amiable but also crafty and ruthless. Determined to keep Sicily as his base of operations, he revised his coronation promise, giving Germany rather than Sicily to his young son Henry (1211–42). In Sicily he suppressed the barons, reformed the laws, founded the University of Naples, and kept a brilliant court, where he shone as scientist, artist, and poet. Frederick was also an excellent soldier, diplomat, and administrator.

To gain German support for his campaigns in northern Italy, Frederick allowed the princes to usurp royal powers. The confirmation of their rights by the Privilege of Worms (1231) made them virtually kings in their own territories. Henry, when he came of age, objected to this policy and revolted but was quickly deposed and imprisoned by his father.

An aggressive emperor such as Frederick was regarded as dangerous by the popes. Angered by his claims to Lombardy, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him for his delay in leading a promised crusade. Frederick finally went to Jerusalem in 1228, was crowned king, and gained the chief Christian sites in the Holy Land. His success did not mollify Gregory, however, who in his absence invaded Sicily. Frederick rushed home and made peace. But he was soon battling (1237) in northern Italy against the second Lombard League of cities. The league was allied with the pope, who excommunicated him again, and Frederick in turn seized the Papal States. The new pope, Innocent IV, fled to Lyon and declared him deposed. Undaunted, Frederick was making headway against the league when he suddenly died.

Frederick's young son Conrad IV inherited Sicily and the imperial title, but Italy and Germany were never united again. The popes, allied with the French, ousted the Hohenstaufens from Sicily. Germany suffered the turmoil of the Great Interregnum (1254–73), during which foreigners claimed the Crown and the princes won a six-century ascendancy.

Society and Culture in the High Middle Ages.

By the late 13th century the empire had lost Poland and Hungary and effective control of Burgundy and Italy. Within its borders the principalities were virtually autonomous. The ancient right of royal election was limited to seven princes, who purposely chose weak men unlikely to thwart their own dynastic ambitions.

The church continued to be a dominant force in society. Cistercian monks and Premonstratensian canons settled new lands in the east, and Dominican and Franciscan friars preached and taught in the towns. The Teutonic Knights moved their headquarters to Marienburg in eastern Germany, where they led a crusade against the pagan Prussians. The knights opened the Baltic coast to the German church and to German merchants.

The struggle between emperors and princes benefited the towns, who paid taxes to the emperors in exchange for freedom from feudal obligations. Trade greatly increased. Cologne and Frankfurt gave access to the fairs of Champagne. Mainz lay on the route across the Alps to Italy. Lübeck and Hamburg dominated North Sea and Baltic trade, and Leipzig was in contact with Russia. Rhine towns and, later, north German towns began to form trade associations, called Hansas. The rich burghers built city walls, cathedrals, and elaborate town halls and guildhalls as expressions of civic pride. By the mid-13th century, French Gothic influences were affecting German architecture. The lofty cathedrals of Bamberg, Strasbourg, Naumburg, and Cologne were richly decorated with sculpture, and they were filled with light from the stained glass in their large, pointed-arched windows.

French culture also affected German literature. Wandering nobles and knights, called minnesingers, wrote and recited courtly love poems in the tradition of Provençal troubadours and French trouvères. Foremost among them were Reinmar von Hagenau (c. 1160–1210) and Walther von der Vogelweide. Other poets, called Spielleute, composed epics. Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach dealt with Christian themes from the French Arthurian cycle. Nonetheless, the two most important epics—the Niebelungenlied and the Gudrunlied—were based on pagan Germanic traditions.

LATE MIDDLE AGES AND EARLY RENAISSANCE

By the late Middle Ages, the great stem duchies had been broken up and new principalities created. Three princely families—Habsburg, Wittelsbach, and Luxemburg—struggled for dynastic rights to the imperial crown.

Princely Rivalry.

In 1273 the electors ended the Great Interregnum by choosing Rudolf of Habsburg, a minor Swabian prince unable to repossess the lands they had usurped. Rudolf I concentrated on aggrandizing his family. Aided by the Wittelsbachs and others, he defeated the rebellious Ottokar II of Bohemia (1230–78) and took the lands Ottokar had usurped—Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola—for his two sons, thus making the Habsburgs one of the great powers in the empire.

On Rudolf's death the electors chose Adolf of Nassau (c. 1250–98) but deposed him when he asserted his authority. They next chose Rudolf's son, Albert of Austria, but he was murdered by his nephew, John of Swabia (1290–1313), whose inheritance he held. Still seeking a weak emperor, the electors voted for Henry, count of Luxemburg. Anxious to restore imperial claims to Italy, Henry VII crossed the Alps in 1310 and temporarily subdued Lombardy; he was crowned by the Roman people, because the popes had left Rome and were then living in Avignon, France—the so-called Babylonian Captivity. He died trying to conquer Naples from the French.

Civil war then raged until the Wittelsbach candidate for the throne, Louis the Bavarian, defeated his Habsburg rival at the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322. Louis IV obtained a secular coronation in Italy, but Pope John XXII, objecting to his interference in Italian politics, declared his title invalid and excommunicated him. Louis then called for a church council and installed an antipope in Rome. At Rhense in 1338 the electors made the momentous declaration that henceforth the king of the Germans would be the majority electoral choice, thus avoiding civil war, and that he would automatically be emperor without being crowned by the pope. This was reflected in the title, official in the 15th century, Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

The Luxemburg Line.

The popes, of course, objected. Clement VI opened negotiations with Charles, king of Bohemia, grandson of Henry VII. In 1347 he was chosen by five of the seven electors, who had previously deposed Louis. Charles IV diplomatically ignored the question of papal assent. In the Golden Bull (1356) he specified the seven electors as the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony (an old title for a new state in the east), the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia. Because the bull made their lands indivisible, granted them monopolies on mining and tolls, and secured them “gifts” from candidates, they were the strongest of all the princes.

Having ensured the power of the princes, the astute Charles entrenched his own dynasty in Bohemia. He bought Brandenburg and took Silesia from Poland to build a great state to the east. To obtain cash, he encouraged the silver, glass, and paper industries of Bohemia. He adorned Prague, his capital, with new buildings in the late Gothic style, founded a noted university, and kept a brilliant court.

Charles's son, Sigismund, forced Pope John XXIII to call the Council of Constance (1414–18), which ended the Great Schism in the papacy. But as the king of Bohemia he was chiefly concerned with his own dynastic lands. Bohemia was convulsed by the Hussite movement, which combined traditional Czech national feeling with desire for much-needed church reform. Sigismund invited the reformer John Huss (Jan Hus) to state his views, under imperial protection, at the Council of Constance, but failed to prevent the council from subsequently burning him as a heretic. This led to the Hussite Wars by which the moderate Calixtine Hussites won some concessions from the church and Sigismund in exchange for their reconciliation.

The Habsburg Line.

When Sigismund died without an heir, the electors unanimously chose his Habsburg son-in-law Albert of Austria, who became emperor as Albert II. From then on, the imperial crown became in practice, although not in theory, hereditary in the Habsburg family. Albert II died in the midst of civil war in Bohemia and an Ottoman invasion of Hungary. His cousin and successor, Frederick III, lost Hungary and Bohemia and sold Luxemburg to France, while he struggled with the German princes and the Turks on his borders. In 1486 the princes forced him to cede his authority to his son, but he retained the title of Holy Roman Emperor until 1493.

Maximilian I, knight and art patron, enthusiastically laid many plans, which never materialized. His chief success was in arranging marriages to benefit his family. By his own marriage to Mary of Burgundy (1457–82) he acquired a rich territory that included the thriving Flemish towns. French-speaking Burgundy was the initial cause of the Habsburg-Valois feud that lasted for the next three centuries. By marrying his son, Philip the Handsome, to the heiress of Spain, Maximilian acquired Spain and its possessions in Italy and the New World. By betrothing his grandson Ferdinand to the heiress of Hungary and Bohemia, he added those states to the inheritance.

15th-Century Society.

In Germany as in the rest of Europe, the 15th century was a time of transition from the land economy of the Middle Ages to the money economy of modern times. The process created painful tensions among all classes of society.

The nobility.

The German nobility ranged from the great electors and other princes of the 240 states of the empire to the minor knights who held fiefs directly from the emperor. They had supreme jurisdiction in their own lands, checked only by diets representing nobles, clergy, and burghers, which alone could levy the taxes needed to pay for new arms and mercenary soldiers. As prices rose and income from land did not, all the nobility felt pressed for funds. Some squeezed more goods and services out of their peasants. Others resorted to raiding their peers or the cities, and still others sold their military services as mercenaries.

The cities.

As centers of commerce, the cities became increasingly important in a money economy. In the south, Nuremberg and Augsburg, home of the Fugger bank, thrived on mines and trade with Italy. In the north, Lübeck, Hamburg, and other cities of the Hanseatic League carried on brisk trade with Britain and Scandinavia. Within the cities the old merchant guilds and new craft guilds, both virtually hereditary, struggled for power. Common laborers had no say. As their trade grew, cities' demand for freedom from attack and from local tolls levied on roads and rivers often led to war with the nobles.

The peasants.

Perhaps one-third of the peasants, like the rest of the population, had been carried off by the Black Death that swept Europe in the mid-14th century. Of the survivors, some had lost their land through frequent subdivision among heirs. Many of these streamed to the cities, while others charged landlords more for their labor. Most small peasants, however, lost whatever rights and freedoms they had traditionally possessed, as lords strove to keep them on the land and make them as profitable as possible. The peasants, especially in southern Germany, finally resorted to violent protest.

The church.

Cries for church reform had been raised at least as early as the 11th-century Cluniac movement. During the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance they became more insistent. On the political level, the church lost prestige as a result of the unedifying Babylonian Captivity and the ensuing Great Schism in the papacy.

On the economic level, the increasingly widespread need for cash led to criticism of the church's wealth. People objected that the church owned much land and bore heavily on its tenants but paid no taxes. Economic and political concerns came together in growing resentment by the German people at sending money to maintain the pope in Rome.

The church was also attacked on the intellectual level by the humanist study of classical antiquity, which spread north from Italy. Nicholas of Cusa proposed a heliocentric theory of astronomy that undermined the accepted biblical view of creation. Literary humanists such as Conradus Celtes (1459–1508), Willibald Pirkheimer (1470–1530), Johann Reuchlin, and Erasmus of Rotterdam urged linguistic purity in the study of biblical and other texts and satirized abuses in the church. The invention of printing from movable type by Johann Gutenberg made it possible to produce Bibles, other books, and pamphlets in great quantity at low cost. As a result, the new learning could circulate widely, preparing the intellectual ground for the Reformation.

AGE OF RELIGIOUS STRIFE

The spiritual concerns of Martin Luther combined with secular ambitions of the German princes to produce the Reformation. The movement for church reform created religious liberty at the cost of Western Christian unity. Religious strife intensified European political wars for 100 years.

The Protestant Reformation.

Charles V succeeded his grandfather Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. He devoted his life to preserving a medieval empire united in faith, a fruitless effort in the pluralistic society created by religious reformers and secular forces.

Luther.

A key figure of the new age was Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar who was disturbed by abuses within the church. He was particularly aroused by the unscrupulous campaign to sell indulgences, or remissions of punishment for sin. In 1517 Luther published a list of 95 theses attacking indulgences, and these stirred up much controversy.

In 1520 Luther published three pamphlets stating his beliefs in the liberty of the Christian conscience informed only by the Bible, the priesthood of all believers, and a state-supported church. Because these doctrines struck at the root of church authority, Pope Leo X issued a bull condemning Luther's works. Luther burned the bull and was then excommunicated. Charles V summoned him to defend himself at the Diet of Worms (1521) and, when Luther refused to recant, outlawed him. On his way home, however, Luther was rescued by Frederick the Wise (1463–1525), elector of Saxony; installed in the Wartburg castle, he began to translate the Bible into German.

Lutheran ideas, partly a continuation of Hussite traditions, were sympathetically received by many. Matters of conscience, however, were often carried to extremes or mixed with socioeconomic grievances. The fanatical Karlstadt urged iconoclastic attacks on church painting, statuary, and stained glass. The mercenary knight Franz von Sickingen (1481–1523) led impecunious south German knights against ecclesiastical lords in the hope of gaining church lands. Peasant groups, wanting a return to old ways, looted and burned castles and monasteries in the Peasants' War (1524–26).

These revolutionaries looked to Luther for guidance in reordering the church and German society, but Luther did not want to mix religious with secular concerns. Emerging from the Wartburg to restore order, he checked Karlstadt and urged the princes to crush every rising, which they did. The peasants then lost all traditional rights, sense of initiative, and status, while the princes set up state churches supported by confiscated Catholic lands. In these new churches the service was in German, and the clergy were permitted to marry.

Conflict and compromise.

At this early stage, a break with Rome did not seem inevitable. Many Lutherans would have remained in the church if nonbiblical practices had been eliminated. Charles V, busy with foreign wars, wanted to make peace at home, but Luther was not conciliatory. Furthermore, Protestants, as the reformers came to be called, were themselves divided. In addition to Lutherans there were Reformed Christians, inspired by the Swiss theologian Huldreich Zwingli, who wanted to set up theocratic states based on the Bible, and radical Anabaptists, mostly poor people who wanted to form churches independent of the state.

At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) Lutherans and Reformed Christians presented separate confessions of faith, indicating that they could not compromise with the Catholics or each other. The Anabaptists were not represented at all. Both the princes and the pope blocked Charles's desire for a council to mediate the dispute. Despairing of peaceful means, Charles led his troops against the Protestant princes and cities of the Schmalkaldic League (1531), routing them at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547. By this time, however, many nobles, who had acquired secularized Catholic lands, were staunch Protestants, and they forced on Charles the compromise Peace of Augsburg (1555). It recognized Lutheranism, but not the Reformed (Calvinist) faith, whose theocratic doctrines seemed revolutionary to the princes. Most significant, it gave the princes the right to choose the religion for their territory.

Luther died in 1546, his work done. Charles, who had failed at a hopeless task, abdicated in 1556. His vast empire was divided, with the Spanish and Burgundian lands going to his son Philip II and the imperial title and the German lands going to his brother Ferdinand.

The Catholic Reformation.

While the emperors Ferdinand I and his son Maximilian II (1527–76) were occupied with the threat of Turkish invasion, Protestantism in Germany grew apace. Its progress was checked, however, by the COUNTER REFORMATION, (q.v.). The long-delayed Council of Trent (1545–63), dominated by the Jesuits, abolished the sale of indulgences but also reformulated doctrine and worship so as to preclude reconciliation with Protestantism. The Jesuits established centers in German cities, where they won many Germans back to Catholicism. The rulers of Bavaria, Austria, Salzburg, Bamberg, and Würzburg restored Catholicism by force, creating a Catholic bloc in southern Germany.

Tension mounted between Protestants and Catholics. Protestant princes under Frederick IV (1574–1610), count palatine, a Reformed Protestant, formed (1608) the Protestant Union. Maximilian I (1573–1651), duke of Bavaria, led (1609) the Catholic princes into the Catholic League. Emperor Rudolf II, a scholarly recluse in Prague, unable to govern, was forced to relinquish his authority to his brother Matthias (1557–1619), who proved no more effective.

Matthias was succeeded by his nephew, who ruled as Ferdinand II. The real power in Europe, however, was Philip II of Spain, with his well-armed troops highly paid in New World gold. Catholic France was determined not to be overwhelmed by Habsburgs on either side. Protestant England and the Netherlands were also opposed to a strong Habsburg dynasty. Denmark and Sweden were lured by the desire to dominate the Baltic. Taking advantage of the quarreling German states, all these countries intervened to make Germany the scene of a devastating, four-phase European War.

The Thirty Years' War.

The trouble began in Protestant Bohemia, which refused to accept the Catholic Ferdinand as king or future emperor. In 1618 the Czechs set up their own government, supported by the Evangelical Union. After the death of Matthias in 1619, they chose the Protestant elector Frederick V (1596–1632), count palatine, as their king. Ferdinand, however, crushed the Bohemian forces at the Battle of Weisserberg (1620); Frederick, called the Winter King, was exiled; and Catholicism was restored by force. The Bohemian nobles were killed, deprived of their lands, or fined. As a result of the war the population declined by more than one-half.

Protestant princes objected to Spanish troops in Germany. They supported Christian IV of Denmark, who, financed by the Dutch and English, invaded Germany in 1625. So began the second phase of the Thirty Years' War, which ended with Christian's defeat. The victorious Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution (1629), which ordered the return of all Catholic church property seized by Protestants since 1552.

The third phase of the war began when Gustav II Adolph of Sweden, who had long wanted to extend Swedish control of the Baltic, invaded Pomerania as the champion of the Protestant princes. The Swedish army won a brilliant victory at Breitenfeld (1631) and took Mainz and Prague, but the war dragged on for years, the two opposing armies devastating the countryside and accomplishing little. In 1635 a truce was declared, and the Edict of Restitution was revoked.

The Swedish, however, were still land-hungry, and the French, led by Cardinal Richelieu, were determined to subdue the Habsburgs. Accordingly, in the fourth phase of the war, the French paid subsidies to the Swedish army to keep it fighting, and French troops crossed the Rhine. After another 13 years of struggle, Emperor Ferdinand III and the princes were ready for peace.

The Peace of Westphalia.

The long war ended in a draw, finalized by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The religious status quo of 1624 was accepted, meaning that the Habsburg lands and the south and west were Catholic, the Reformed faith was recognized, and Protestants could retain acquired lands.

Politically, the Holy Roman Empire, or First Reich, continued in name, but it had lost all claim to universality or effective centralized government. Economically and socially, Germany had lost about one-third of its people to war, famine, and plague and much of its livestock, capital, and trade. Bands of refugees and mercenaries roamed the countryside, seizing what they could.

Cultural Life in the Renaissance and Reformation.

Renaissance classicism and the Protestant Reformation deeply affected the arts of the 16th century and transformed education.

The visual arts.

In painting and sculpture the late Gothic style, characterized by religious devotion and love of fine detail, lingered on. Great effort was expended on stained-glass windows and altarpieces by such masters as the painters Matthias Grünewald and Stefan Lochner and the sculptors Veit Stoss, Peter Vischer the Elder, Adam Kraft (c. 1460–1509), and Tilman Riemenschneider. The Renaissance style, marked by classical motifs and interest in the natural world, was introduced from Italy by Albrecht Dürer, who brought German painting to heights previously unknown. Lucas Cranach and Hans Holbein the Younger expressed the humanist emphasis on the individual in portraits. Dürer and Martin Schongauer combined Gothic and Renaissance elements in the new arts of woodcut and copper engraving, used for printed book illustration.

Architecture was late Gothic until the Reformation, when church building virtually stopped. Protestants frowned on church art, but they spent lavishly on the steep-roofed, half-timbered, decoratively painted houses of the burghers and on imposing palaces and guildhalls in the Renaissance style.

Literature and scholarship.

Medieval tradition continued in popular German literature in the form of folk songs, anecdotes about folk heroes, and religious and secular folk plays. Folk and classical themes provided source material for the Meistersinger, lyric poets who wrote according to the strict forms of the earlier minnesingers. Foremost among them was Hans Sachs, a cobbler of Nuremberg.

The most important development in literature was Luther's translation of the Bible into a vigorous vernacular that helped give the German people a unified literary language. Luther and others wrote German hymns for Protestant congregations, a liturgical innovation that laid the foundation for German church music and influenced worship throughout the Protestant world. Melanchthon, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, lucidly presented Protestant doctrines in Latin to the non-German world. He and other humanists introduced classical scholarship to universities in Cologne, Leipzig, Vienna, and other cities, and he helped found new universities in Königsberg, Jena, and Marburg.

Education.

Medieval German education had been limited chiefly to schools and universities run by religious orders to train churchmen and a few government officials. Even the new humanist learning was at first intended for a small, scholarly elite. But Luther, consistent with his belief in the priesthood of all believers and individual study of the Bible, thought that state schools should be open to children of every class. In the Protestant states, primary schools were set up to teach German and religion. Latin was the principal subject in the secondary schools (Gymnasien) founded by Melanchthon, which presented for the first time a graded course of study. Saxony and other Protestant states gradually opened Gymnasien, which influenced German education into the 20th century. In the Catholic states similar but highly centralized schools were established. All these schools were attended chiefly by boys whose families could afford the fees.

RISE OF AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA

In the late 17th and 18th centuries, the empire was overshadowed by France and England. Its creaking framework was supported by lesser German princes, who wanted its protection, and undermined by greater princes, who wanted freedom to develop on their own. The Wettins of Saxony, expanding eastward, became kings of Poland. The Welfs of Brunswick-Lüneburg became electors of Hannover and gained great influence when Elector George inherited England in 1714. The Wittelsbachs of Bavaria intrigued for a crown in the Spanish Netherlands. Dominating the other princes were the Habsburgs of Austria, who also held Bohemia and Hungary, and the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, who became kings of Prussia.

Foreign Wars.

Scarcely had they recovered from the Thirty Years' War when the princes and the emperor plunged into a variety of new dynastic struggles.

French wars.

In the west the princes were involved in four wars by which Louis XIV strove to extend French territory to the Rhine. In the War of the Devolution (1667–68), Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg accepted a pension from Louis in return for political support. In the Dutch War (1672–78), however, Frederick William turned against Louis and lost his conquests in Pomerania. But he later benefited Brandenburg by offering refuge to Huguenots (French Calvinists), whom Louis had exiled by revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Some 20,000 Huguenots migrated east, bringing with them weaving skills and French culture.

Louis's invasion of the Palatinate led to the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–97), which won him Strasbourg and Alsace.

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) was fought over the right of Louis XIV's grandson, Philip V, to inherit the Spanish throne. Bavaria sided with France, because Louis promised the elector the crown of the Spanish Netherlands. Brandenburg supported the successive emperors Leopold I and Joseph I in return for imperial recognition of Prussia as a kingdom. The other European states also allied with the empire to block unification of France and Spain. Large, well-trained, well-equipped armies fought in Bavaria and western Germany, wreaking havoc and ruin. When both sides were exhausted, they accepted the Peace of Utrecht.

Northern wars.

Encroached on from the west, the German princes turned to the north and east, where they came into conflict with Sweden in the Baltic. In the First Northern War (1655–60) the emperor and the elector of Brandenburg supported Poland and Denmark against Charles X Gustav of Sweden. The outcome, however, did not effect much change.

In the Great Northern War (1700–21), which paralleled the War of the Spanish Succession, Saxony, Poland, Brandenburg-Prussia, Hannover, Denmark, and Russia joined forces against Sweden. At the end of it, the treaties of Stockholm and Nystadt restored Poland to Augustus II (1670–1733), transferred Stettin and West Pomerania from Sweden to Brandenburg-Prussia, and gave Sweden's eastern Baltic lands to Russia.

Turkish wars.

The Germans had also to reckon with the Ottoman Turks, who, after a period of quiescence, were vigorously expanding in southeastern Europe. When the Turks invaded Hungary in 1663, imperial troops managed to defeat them and win a 20-year truce. More eager to check the Catholic Habsburgs than the Muslim Turks, Louis XIV and the Hungarians encouraged Turkish aggression. When the truce was up, the Ottomans besieged Vienna in 1683. In this emergency imperial troops, combined with those of John III Sobieski of Poland, rescued the city. The Turks were driven beyond the Danube, and Hungary was compelled to recognize the Habsburg right to inherit the Hungarian crown. The Turkish wars continued, however, until the brilliant general Prince Eugene of Savoy led imperial troops to victory at Senta (1697). By the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) the Habsburgs regained most of Hungary. The depopulated country was resettled with German veterans, and imperial authority centralized in Vienna was imposed.

Austro-Prussian Rivalry.

By 1740 the other German states had fallen behind, leaving Austria and Prussia as rivals for dominance in central Europe.

Growth of Prussia.

The Hohenzollerns, who had been granted Brandenburg in the 15th century, had acquired a number of additional, geographically unconnected territories in the west. Outside the empire to the east was the most important area, Prussia, which they had inherited as a Polish duchy in 1618 and converted into an independent kingdom in 1701. Gradually, all the Hohenzollern lands came to be known as the kingdom of Prussia.

Frederick William I of Prussia was a sturdy, hard-headed soldier determined to unite his disparate possessions into a modern military state. Crushing local customs and interests, he created an honest, efficient bureaucracy, which filled the treasury and ran the country for the benefit of a large standing army. He tried to convert his intellectual and artistic son Frederick into an image of himself.

Frederick II, the Great, an unhappy genius, was equally at home on the battlefield and enjoying French literature and music in his Sans Souci (Carefree) Palace near Berlin. He spent most of his life, however, aggrandizing Prussia at the expense of Austria and Poland and refining and reorganizing the Prussian government and economy to better serve the army.

War of the Austrian Succession.

Emperor Charles VI, anxious to keep Habsburg lands unified, issued the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713, declaring that his only child, Maria Theresa, should succeed him. When he died in 1740, the electors of Bavaria and Saxony rejected the Pragmatic Sanction on the grounds that they had prior claims through their wives. Frederick II offered his support to Maria Theresa in exchange for the rich province of Silesia. Convinced of the justice of her cause, she indignantly refused. Frederick promptly invaded Silesia, precipitating the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). The Bavarians, Saxons, and French invaded Austria and Bohemia, while Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia came to the aid of Austria.

Alarmed by Frederick's military victories, Maria Theresa made peace with him in 1742, ceding him Silesia. Austria and its allies succeeded, however, in driving the French from Bohemia and conquering Bavaria to replace the lost Silesia. By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Maria Theresa's husband, Francis, duke of Lorraine, was recognized as emperor, although it was she who actually ruled. In return, Maria Theresa gave up Bavaria and allowed Prussia to keep Silesia.

Seven Years' War.

The emergence of Prussia as a major power led to a radical shift of alliances and to new hostilities. Maria Theresa, bent on reconquering Silesia, made an alliance with Elizabeth of Russia. George II of Britain, fearing possible French attack on Hannover, made a treaty of neutrality with Frederick. The old Habsburg-Valois rivalry was forgotten as the Austrian minister, Prince Kaunitz, maneuvered Louis XV, fearful of Prussia, into an alliance with Maria Theresa. Frederick, anticipating encirclement, struck first by invading Saxony and Bohemia, beginning the Seven Years' War (1756–63).

Violence spread as the Austrians invaded Silesia, the Russians marched into Prussia, and the French attacked Hannover. Despite good leadership, Frederick soon found himself hard pressed by many enemies. He was conveniently rescued by the death of Elizabeth of Russia and the succession of Peter III, who admired Frederick and at once made peace. The exhausted French also wanted peace. The Treaty of Hubertusburg restored the status quo, with Frederick keeping Silesia.

Bitterly disappointed, Maria Theresa devoted herself to internal affairs. She gradually reorganized the government and established uniform taxes, a customs union, and state-supported elementary schools. She encouraged nobles and commoners to take government and army posts. Wise, warmhearted, and tactful, she was loved by all her subjects. She did not always agree, however, with her idealistic son, Joseph. Joseph II was an enlightened monarch who impatiently tried to create an efficient, modern Germanic bureaucracy without regard for the strong local prejudices.

Eastward expansion.

Prussia was anxious to annex Polish territory separating Brandenburg and Prussia. Austria, still regretting Silesia, looked to the east for compensation. Both countries feared the new Russian presence. A weak Poland seemed ample excuse for intervention, and in 1772 Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to the first partition of Poland.

When the Bavarian throne became vacant, Joseph tried to annex Bavaria. Frederick objected and formed the League of Princes against the emperor. Blocked by Frederick in the short War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–79), Joseph turned east again. A Turkish war (1788–91) proved fruitless, and he was left out of the second partition of Poland (1793). Not to be overlooked, he insisted that Austria share in the third partition (1795), in which Poland entirely disappeared.

The Baroque Age and the Enlightenment.

The end of religious strife and of the Turkish threat gave Germans new confidence. In the 18th century, German culture, nourished by French, English, and Italian developments, reached a brilliant flowering.

The princely courts.

The princes, resisting imperial control and overriding local diets, made themselves absolute monarchs on the model of Louis XIV. They centralized their governments and established mercantile economies. Engaging the foremost artists, they made their capitals artistic and intellectual centers, resplendent with palaces, churches, museums, theaters, gardens, and universities.

Social and cultural life centered in the courts, which were the chief source of status. Courtiers scorned burghers and peasants as uncouth citizens, considering them useful only to pay taxes to support court life. Princes maintained their courts also by accepting foreign subsidies and selling peasant boys as mercenary soldiers. To escape war and taxes, many Germans migrated to North America.

Art and music.

In the Catholic south, great numbers of churches and monasteries were built or rebuilt. They borrowed the dramatic baroque style that had developed out of the Italian and French Renaissance, transforming it into a graceful, playfully exuberant, rococo style that was uniquely German. Outstanding are the church at Vierzehnheiligen by Balthasar Neumann; the Karlskirche, Vienna, by J. B. Fischer von Erlach; and the churches of the brothers C. D. Asam (1686–1739) and E. Q. Asam (1692–1750). The baroque-rococo style was also used for palaces, such as Schönbrunn, outside Vienna, and the Zwinger in Dresden.

In the baroque period, instrumental music, mostly for chamber groups or keyboard, took the form of complex, highly structured polyphonic suites, preludes, and fugues by such masters as Heinrich Schütz and J. S. Bach. In the preclassical and classical periods, after 1720, orchestral music became more dominant and the compositions themselves longer and more abstract, with the development of sonata form and symphonic structure. Experimentation with orchestral forces and textures by C. P. E. Bach and others culminated in the great achievements of F. J. Haydn, W. A. Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Instrumental and vocal music were combined in the religious chorales and oratorios of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel and in the Italian-inspired operas of Handel and G. P. Telemann. Opera truly came of age in the hands of C. W. Gluck and was carried to greater refinement by the versatile Mozart.

Literature and thought.

The reaction against the religious concerns of the tumultuous 16th and early 17th centuries was the growth of rationalism and the scientific spirit, which produced the European Enlightenment. Absorbing the works of British and French thinkers, German professors discarded the theology of a world in which sinful men and women needed divine grace. They adopted the optimistic, secular philosophy of a world ordered by natural law in which all humans, innately rational and good, could, through education, aim at perfection.

The first major German philosopher, G. W. von Leibniz, posited a universe ruled by a natural, preestablished harmony. The idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant analyzed the power of reason and asserted a rational basis for ethics. The playwright G. E. Lessing returned to the structure of classical drama and introduced to German theater the English principle of toleration and an interest in ordinary middle-class life.

Rationalism was soon opposed by a current stressing intuition and feeling. In religion it took the form of an evangelical revival, known as PIETISM, (q.v.). Many middle- and lower-class Germans became followers of the Lutheran pastors P. J. Spener and A. H. Francke (1663–1727), who urged individual Bible study and personal experience of spiritual regeneration expressed in ethical conduct. The University of Halle (1694) became a center of Pietist education, charity, and training of missionaries. Pietism had a lasting influence on Lutheranism and on many German thinkers.

In literature the antirationalist tendency led to the late 18th-century Sturm und Drang (literally, “storm and stress”) movement. Writers in this revolutionary spirit viewed nature as a constantly changing force and valued humans for their individual passions rather than universal reason. Contributing to this spirit was the insistence of J. G. von Herder on the influence of history on literature, especially the importance of medieval folk songs and tales. Inspired by the French Revolution, antirationalism broadened into early romanticism, primarily concerned with the will and feelings of the unique, creative individual. The philosopher J. G. Fichte saw the universe as based on the moral will of God. August von Schlegel translated Shakespeare's plays, which emphasize history and individual character. Novalis wrote mystical Christian lyric poetry.

These contrasting and yet complementary streams came together in the work of three German literary masters: Friedrich von Schiller, who wrote classical dramas in historical settings, infused with moral conviction and the struggle for freedom; Friedrich Hölderlin, who wrote lyrical poems of profound spiritual anguish modeled on classical Greek forms; and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the sage of Weimar, a giant of European literature. Goethe's early autobiographical novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774; trans. 1779), was in the romantic spirit. The more disciplined dramas Egmont (1788) and Torquato Tasso (1790), inspired by his Italian travels, were in the classical vein. He harmoniously combined both romantic and classical outlooks in the dramatic masterpiece Faust (1832).

AGE OF NATIONALISM

Enlightenment theories of representative government, combined with romantic stress on freedom and the distinctive history of a people, inspired Germans and other ethnic groups with a desire for national unification and liberal reform. The conquests of Napoleon subsequently aroused their sense of national identity.

Napoleonic Wars.

For 18 years the German states variously engaged in five wars of defense against the well-trained, unified armies of revolutionary and Napoleonic France. In the first two wars the French took the left bank of the Rhine. In the third, Napoleon conquered Vienna and Berlin. In 1806 he reorganized the western German states, to compensate for their left-bank losses, into the Confederation of the Rhine. Austria and Prussia were excluded and lost much territory. In 1809 Austria led a fourth war against France, while Napoleon was occupied in Spain, but in the process it lost more land.

In 1812, Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow, pursued by the Russians, encouraged the allies to make another effort. Frederick William III of Prussia, joined by Austria and Russia, led a War of Liberation, in which Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig (1813). After much bloodshed the allies took Paris in 1814.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) the allies redrew the map of Europe. Austria, which gave up the Austrian Netherlands and its Swabian lands in the west, was compensated in the south and east by Salzburg, the Tirol, Lombardy and Venetia in Italy, and Illyria and Dalmatia on the Adriatic Sea. Prussia lost most of its Polish territory but gained much of Saxony and Swedish Pomerania as well as land in the Rhineland and Westphalia, including the undeveloped iron and coal resources of the Ruhr and Saar.

The German Confederation.

The Congress of Vienna replaced the Holy Roman Empire of more than 240 states with the German Confederation of 39 states represented by a powerless diet. Opinions differed on what the character of the new confederation should be. Many Germans wanted to fashion a liberal government on British and French models according to a constitution guaranteeing popular representation, trial by jury, and free speech. They also hoped for national unification. Such ideas were especially popular among journalists, lawyers, and professors and with impatient university students, who formed secret societies for rapid action. These aims also appealed to the various restive peoples living within the Austrian Empire.

Liberalism and nationalism were bitterly opposed by the rulers of Prussia and Austria and by the recently crowned kings of Bavaria, Hannover, Württemberg, and Saxony, who dreaded any encroachment on their individual sovereignty. Accordingly, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain formed the Quadruple Alliance to suppress—by force if necessary—any threat to the Vienna settlement. The German rulers supported the repressive system instituted by the Austrian foreign minister Prince Klemens von Metternich. Frederick William III blocked reforms planned by his ministers. Prussia outmaneuvered Austria by instituting a customs union of most German states except Austria.

The July Revolution in Paris in 1830 set off liberal risings in many German states. Metternich had the confederation forbid public meetings and ban petitions. Nevertheless, in 1848 another wave of revolutions, beginning in Paris, washed over Europe. Nationalist groups revolted in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, and Lombardy. Metternich resigned and Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his young grandson Francis Joseph. Uprisings also took place in Bavaria, Prussia, and southwest Germany. The frightened rulers agreed to send delegates to an assembly in Frankfurt.

The rebellions were soon crushed, however. In Austria a liberal constitutional assembly was dissolved, and a constitution providing highly centralized, although representative, government was imposed. Hungary, which had declared itself a republic, was forcibly subdued. In Prussia Frederick William IV imposed an authoritarian constitution.

Meanwhile, the Frankfurt Assembly wrote a liberal constitution for a united Germany under a hereditary emperor. Austria refused to allow its German lands to be included, so the assembly regretfully decided that “Germany” should consist of the German states without Austria. For lack of an alternative, they offered the crown to Frederick William, who loftily refused it. The assembly dispersed in failure; unity was to be achieved with Prussian military might.

The German Empire.

After the failure of the Frankfurt Assembly, both Prussia and Austria put forth conflicting plans for union. On the brink, Prussia backed down, but only temporarily. William I was determined that neither Austria nor a newly aggressive France should thwart Prussian ambitions. He and his chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, decided that Prussia must become unassailable. Bismarck, a Prussian Junker (aristocrat) of forceful intellect, overbearing manner, and deep loyalty to the Crown, used unification as a means to that end.

Unification.

Bismarck planned a realpolitik (politics of reality) that astutely combined diplomacy with “blood-and-iron” militarism in order to eliminate Austrian influence and bring about unification on Prussian terms. As a preliminary he bought the neutrality of Russia, Italy, and France with friendly treaties. His first step was to invite Austria in 1864 to join an invasion of Schleswig-Holstein. These two duchies were ruled by Den-mark. The Austrians and Prussians quickly defeated the Danes but soon fell out over control of the conquered duchies.

On that excuse Bismarck took a second step by launching the Seven Weeks' War against Austria. Skillfully coordinating three armies, Gen. Helmuth von Moltke made short work of the Austrians at Königgrätz in 1866. Bismarck, however, did not want to alienate Austria irrevocably; he made an easy peace. Austria gave up Venetia to Italian nationalists. Prussia annexed Schleswig-Holstein, Hannover, and other states and organized the North German Confederation (1867) without Austria.

To overcome south German fears of an enlarged Prussia, Bismarck took a third step, the Franco-Prussian War. In 1870 the aggressive French emperor Napoleon III unwisely pressed William I to promise that a Hohenzollern would never take the vacant Spanish throne. Bismarck distorted William's account of the incident to make it seem as if the French had been insulted and then published the account. The outraged French declared war. Stirred by national loyalty, the south German states joined forces behind Prussia, whose seasoned armies conquered the disorganized French at Sedan and, after a long siege, took Paris in 1871. With these events Bismarck convinced the south German states that Prussian hegemony was inevitable. At Versailles in 1871 he persuaded a reluctant William to take a new title as head of the German Empire, the Second Reich.

The age of Bismarck.

Having sufficiently aggrandized Prussia, the Iron Chancellor, as Bismarck was called, worked for peace. He constructed a series of alliances designed to protect Germany from aggression. At the Congress of Berlin (1878) Bismarck mediated a settlement in the Balkans, where various Slavic groups kept rising against the decaying Ottoman Empire. Largely to please the merchant class, he consented to Germany's acquiring colonies in Africa and the Pacific. Germany found its colonies valuable chiefly for prestige, however.

At home, Bismarck encouraged the Industrial Revolution, which developed rapidly after 1850 as Germans applied advanced industrial technology to the iron and coal resources of the Ruhr and Saar. The population rose by a third, and factories boomed, transforming rural farmers into urban producers of steel for machinery, railways, and ships. This enlarged city population demanded a share in the government.

The empire, however, did not function democratically. The 25 nominally sovereign states (plus Alsace-Lorraine) of the North German Confederation were ruled by a Bundesrat of princes dominated by Prussia and a powerless Reichstag of elected deputies, while the chancellor was responsible only to the emperor.

Mindful of old papal-imperial rivalry, Bismarck believed that the Catholic church, which had declared the infallibility of the pope in 1870, threatened the supremacy of the German state. He therefore initiated the Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”), during which he suppressed many religious orders and dismissed, imprisoned, or exiled disobedient priests. Church-state strife cooled in 1879, chiefly because Bismarck needed the Roman Catholic Center party's support against the Liberals to obtain high tariffs that would protect German agriculture and industry from cheap imports.

Bismarck next turned his wrath on the Socialist party, forerunner of the Social Democratic party. Blaming on it two attempts by non-Socialists to assassinate William, he had a new Reichstag elected, which supported tariffs and outlawed the Socialists. To forestall workers' demands and to ensure healthy army recruits, he provided state insurance for sickness, accidents, and old age. When the outlawed Socialist party won a large number of seats in the election of 1890, Bismarck prepared to abolish the constitution. Suddenly, however, he was dismissed by the new emperor, William II, who wanted to rule the empire in his own right.

19th-Century Art and Thought.

With little scope for political action, many middle-class Germans turned to cultural pursuits, through which they influenced the Western world.

The arts.

German painting, reacting from the neoclassicism of Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79), became romantic, as exemplified by the vast, allegorical landscapes of C. D. Friedrich and P. O. Runge (1777–1810). Later painting was realistic. Architecture was romantic Gothic or imposing neoclassical.

Music also became romantic. Much of it was inspired by literature, for example, the art songs, or lieder, of Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf and the operas of Richard Wagner. Instrumental music with literary or pictorial allusions, called program music, took the form of symphonic poems by Franz Liszt. Pure music, in contrast to program music, by such masters as Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Felix Mendelssohn continued classical forms. Late romantic music tended toward the dramatic and thickly textured, as in the complex symphonies of Gustav Mahler and the emotionally intense tone poems of Richard Strauss.

Romantic literature, inspired by the lyrics of Goethe, Schiller, and Heinrich Heine, included the work of such poets and storytellers as Ludwig Tieck, Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Eichendorff, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and J. L. Uhland. These romantics often used German folk materials such as the songs and tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The conflict between the individual and society, first treated by Goethe, was expressed in the novels of Theodor Fontane, Adalbert Stifter (1805–68), and Gottfried Keller, a Swiss, and in the dramas of Franz Grillparzer and Friedrich Hebbel. Their interest in psychology was part of the more realistic approach to the world that gradually superseded romanticism. Realistic criticism of society was evident in the ironic lyrics of Heine and took the extreme form of social determinism in the naturalist poems of Arno Holz (1863–1929) and the plays of Hermann Sudermann and Gerhart Hauptmann.

Education and thought.

The French capture of Berlin in 1806 shocked the Prussians into an effort to recover in cultural dignity what they had lost in political fact. Under Wilhelm von Humboldt, the educational system was reorganized to stress the individuality of the student and the moral duty of the state to educate its citizens. Elementary schools emphasized experience instead of memorization. Gymnasien combined classical, Christian, and patriotic values to prepare middle-class as well as aristocratic students for the university. The University of Berlin became an outstanding center of humanistic, historical, and, especially, scientific studies.

German nationalism found justification in the work of the foremost thinkers of the day, J. G. Fichte and Friedrich Schleiermacher. The romantic Friedrich von Schelling presented all history as developing toward an absolute harmony of mind and matter. He influenced the absolute idealist G. W. F. Hegel, who synthesized nature and mind in the progress of the Absolute World Spirit to its embodiment in the Prussian state.

Opposing nationalism, the revolutionary philosophy of Karl Marx cast the Hegelian dialectic in materialistic terms, declaring that all ideas arise from economic systems. Marx urged workers throughout the world to unite in violently overthrowing existing governments and creating a new classless society.

Much more pessimistic was the view of Arthur Schopenhauer, who saw the world as a scene of painful, unavoidable conflict among individual wills. Drawing on Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche valued the creative “will to power” of the heroic individual, which sets him apart from the inferior masses. Extreme nationalists, mixing the Nietzschean superman with a romantic glorification of the German people, developed a hazy but heady concept of German racial superiority that contributed to two world wars.

WORLD WAR AND DEFEAT

The nationalism that created Germany in the 19th century led it into two disastrous wars and consequent division in the 20th century.

World War I.

None of the European powers wanted World War I, but they all feared Germany—newly unified, outstripping them in population and industry, and aggressively self-assertive—as a dangerous rival. Specifically, France wanted to recover Alsace-Lorraine; Britain, a seafaring country, felt threatened by German colonial expansion and William II's insistence on a large navy; Austria and Russia feared pressure within their tottering empires. Germany itself had nightmares of a war on two fronts. All these powers sought protection in huge, peacetime, standing armies and in an intricate system of international alliances.

Bismarck's delicate balance of powers proved too difficult for William II to maintain. Refusing (1887) to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, he continued the Triple Alliance (1882) of Germany, Austria, and Italy. Rebuffed, Russia made (1894) an alliance with France. Britain, long neutral, settled its colonial differences with France in the Entente Cordiale (1904) and its Middle East dispute with Russia in 1907, resulting in the Triple Entente. Thus, Europe was divided into two armed camps.

Steps toward war.

Crises in Morocco and the Balkans intensified antagonisms. William twice interfered in Morocco (1905, 1911), which France claimed, to protect German interests in Africa. Austria's annexation (1908) of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina spoiled Serbia's hopes of gaining them. The assassination, with Serbian knowledge, of the liberal Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 proved to be the spark that set off the war. Germany rashly assured Austria of full support, resulting in an Austrian ultimatum that Serbia could not accept. Because military advantage depended on rapid mobilization, the powers then moved with headlong speed. Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia, to defend Serbia, mobilized against Austria and Germany. Germany gave Russia 12 hours to demobilize, called up its own troops, and, receiving no answer, declared war on Russia. Assuming that France would aid Russia, Germany also declared war on France.

The Germans hoped that a quick conquest of France would secure the western front and release forces for the east. Avoiding the fortified French frontier, German armies swept through neutral Belgium, hoping to take Paris by surprise. This violation of international law brought Britain to the aid of France and destroyed all sympathy for the Central Powers.

Course of war.

German forces nearly reached Paris. The British and French miraculously turned back the overstretched German lines at the Battle of the Marne, however, and the two sides dug trenches for a ferocious war of attrition that would last for four years. Meanwhile, the Russians attacked on the east, plunging Germany into the dreaded two-front war.

The Germans several times defeated the ill-equipped Russians, but they could make no headway in the west. The Allies blockaded Germany to cut off food and raw materials. Desperate to break the blockade, the Germans declared unrestricted submarine warfare. After several U.S. ships were sunk, the U.S. entered the war in 1917. The next year Russia, in the throes of two revolutions, sued for peace, which was concluded at Brest-Litovsk in 1918. Thus freed in the east, in 1918 the Germans launched a final, all-out offensive in the west, but the united Allies slowly turned the tide.

Recognizing the situation as hopeless, the German high command urged William to let a new civil government sue for peace. Moreover, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on dealing with civilians. William grudgingly appointed Prince Max of Baden (1867–1929) chancellor, and while he negotiated with Wilson, fighting continued, sailors mutinied, socialists struck, workers and the military formed Communist councils, and revolution broke out in Bavaria. Prince Max announced the abdication of William II and resigned. A leader of the Social Democrats proclaimed Germany a republic.

Versailles treaty.

Having surrendered and changed its government, Germany expected a negotiated peace rather than the harsh terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. But the Allies were determined to receive reparation for their losses and to see that their enemy was never again in a position to endanger them. Accordingly, Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France and West Prussia to Poland, creating a Polish Corridor between Germany and East Prussia. It also lost its colonies and had to give up most of its coal, trains, and merchant ships, as well as its navy. Germany had to limit its army and submit to Allied occupation of the Rhineland for 15 years. Worst of all, the Germans had to accept full responsibility for causing the war and, consequently, pay its total cost. These last provisions particularly rankled; Germans did not consider themselves more guilty than anyone else and could not possibly pay all that was demanded.

The Versailles treaty, understandable from the Allies' immediate point of view, did not ensure lasting peace. Germany was neither crushed completely nor encouraged to return to the European community. Instead, by accepting the treaty, the new German government gained a bad name among its citizens, crippling its chances of success.

The Weimar Republic.

In Weimar in 1919, a national assembly, led by the Social Democratic party, wrote a democratic constitution for the new German Reich. But the prospects of the Weimar Republic, as it was familiarly known, were dim. For most Germans the government bore the stigma of military defeat and the Versailles treaty, which they regarded as only temporary. In addition, as a parliamentary government, it was opposed on principle by both conservative militarists and revolutionary socialists. Both sides, using private armies, frequently tried to overthrow the government, as in the uprising (1919) of the Communist Spartacists under Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and in the military “Kapp putsch” (1920).

The economic situation made matters worse. Because Germany could not meet reparations requirements, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in 1923 to control the coal mines. The government encouraged the workers to resist passively, printing vast amounts of money to pay them. The resulting inflation wiped out savings, pensions, insurance, and other forms of fixed income, creating a social revolution that destroyed the most stable elements in Germany.

Aided by the Dawes Plan (1924), which set reasonable annual amounts of reparations and provided for foreign loans, the brilliant minister Gustav Stresemann reorganized the monetary system and encouraged industry. For five years Germany enjoyed relative peace and prosperity; in 1926 it joined the League of Nations. The worldwide depression of 1929, however, plunged the country once more into disaster. Millions of unemployed, disillusioned by capitalist democracy, turned to communism or to the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) party led by Adolf Hitler.

Hitler and the Third Reich.

A former army corporal, Hitler hated aristocrats, capitalists, Communists, and liberals, as well as Jews and other so-called non-Aryans. He had already tried to topple the government in the “beer hall putsch” in Munich in 1923. After nearly a year in prison, he continued to build up the Nazi party. A gifted public speaker, Hitler rapidly won supporters by denouncing the Weimar government as weak and treacherous. He proposed giving the jobs belonging to Jews, whom he painted as villainous, to deserving Germans, and he promised to recover Germany's strength and honor. In return, he demanded the complete loyalty and obedience of people to himself as their führer (“leader”). To reinforce his message, brown-shirted storm troopers attacked Communists, Jews, and other party targets.

In the depths of the depression of 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag. In 1933, with the support of right-wing elements, Hitler was appointed chancellor. To secure supreme power for himself, Hitler called new elections. Blaming a fire in the Reichstag building on the Communists, he banned the Communist party. In the new Reichstag the Nazis, Nationals, and Catholic Center passed the revolutionary Enabling Act allowing the government to dictate all aspects of German life.

Armed with this power, Hitler set out to make the Third Reich, as he called the new totalitarian Germany. The groundwork had been laid in World War I, when the military ran the government. From that foundation, Hitler proceeded with frightening efficiency. Consolidating legislative, executive, judicial, and military authority in himself, he remained chancellor, became head of state after the death of Paul von Hindenburg, headed a new court system, and commanded the armed forces.

All political parties except the Nazis were banned. People with one or more Jewish grandparents were deprived of citizenship, barred from civil service and professions, and heavily fined. Churches had to cooperate with the government. Strikes were forbidden, and the unemployed were enrolled in labor camps or the army as Germany strove to be economically self-sufficient. An elite, professional army, enlarged by conscription, was established to carry out Hitler's plan for conquest. Publishing and teaching became means of propaganda. Children were also indoctrinated through the Hitler Youth movement. Gigantic rallies with blown-up posters, marching ranks, and frenzied speeches whipped up enthusiasm. Backing up the propaganda were the Gestapo (secret police), the SS (elite guard), and an elaborate system of concentration camps. Some Germans did not take Hitler seriously, but others accepted his emphasis on race and violence. Outspoken dissenters left the country or took the consequences.

World War II.

Many of Europe's problems were left unresolved by World War I. Germany's willingness to seek a solution by force, while other countries wanted to avoid violence at all costs, led to World War II.

Steps toward war.

Hitler planned to threaten and bluff the European powers into allowing him gradually to revise Germany's boundaries. His goal, to unite all Germans and give them “living space” (Lebensraum), did not seem unreasonable to some statesmen, who realized that the Versailles treaty had been unjust. At the time, no single demand of Hitler's seemed worth risking war to protest. Germany left the League of Nations in 1933 and, virtually unopposed, began (1935) to rearm; it then reoccupied (1936) the Rhineland. Germany signed an anti-Communist pact with Japan and made an alliance with Fascist Italy, creating the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. In 1938 it declared an Anschluss (“union”) with Austria. At Munich that year, Britain, France, and Italy timorously acceded to Hitler's demand for the German-populated Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, on his promise that Germany would then be satisfied.

In March 1939, breaking his word, Hitler occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia. In August, dramatically reversing his anti-Communist policy, he made a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union containing a secret clause on the partition of Poland. His repeated demands for Danzig (Gdansk) in the Polish Corridor led to a Polish-British pact and Polish mobilization. On September 1, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France promptly declared war on Germany. World War II had begun.

Course of the war.

In a few weeks of blitzkrieg (literally, lightning war), mechanized German divisions overwhelmed the ill-equipped Poles, taking western Poland. The Soviets, not to be outdone, seized the eastern part. Encouraged by success, in 1940 Germany swallowed Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries and invaded France, which rapidly collapsed. British and French forces were hastily evacuated from Dunkirk to England. Hitler then blockaded Britain with submarines and bombed the country with his new air force. He made a 10-year military pact with the other Axis powers—Italy and Japan. In 1941, to aid faltering Italian forces, he sent troops to North Africa, Greece, and Yugoslavia. To block Soviet ambitions in agricultural eastern Europe, which industrial Germany needed, he suddenly invaded the Soviet Union. As the Soviets retreated eastward, German armies engulfed the rich Ukraine.

At this point, Hitler was master of continental Europe. In 1942, however, Britain was still resisting, and the U.S., which had entered the war after an attack by Japan, was sending supplies to Britain and the Soviet Union. Hitler then ordered total mobilization of the men and resources available to him. Throughout Europe, conquered peoples, especially Slavs and Jews, were executed or forced into labor in German war factories, while their countries were drained of food and raw materials.

In 1943 the tide began to turn. Supply lines in the Soviet Union were overextended, and the Germans were gradually driven west. Axis forces in North Africa were defeated, and Italy was invaded. Germany itself, from 1942 on, was being systematically bombed. Although defeat was inevitable, a deranged Hitler refused to surrender. The war dragged on as British and U.S. forces invaded Normandy in 1944 and swept inexorably east while the Soviets marched west. Hitler committed suicide just before Soviet tanks rolled into Berlin in April 1945.

GERMAN RULERS AND REGIMES 800–1945
Ruler	Years of Rule
HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS
Elected German kings, who also ruled the Holy Roman Empire, regarded as the First Reich; for list, see HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,.	800–1806
ELECTORS OF BRANDENBURG AND DUKES OF PRUSSIA
George William	1619–40
Frederick William the Great Elector	1640–88
Frederick III1	1688–1713
KINGS OF PRUSSIA
Frederick I	1701–13
Frederick William I	1713–40
Frederick II, the Great	1740–86
Frederick William II	1786–97
Frederick William III	1797–1840
Frederick William IV	1840–61
William I2	1861–88
GERMAN EMPERORS3
William I	1871–88
Frederick III	1888
William II	1888–1918
PRESIDENTS4
Friedrich Ebert	1919–25
Paul von Hindenburg	1925–33
FÜHRER5
Adolf Hitler	1933–45
1 - Became Frederick I, king of Prussia, 1701; the Hohenzollern dynasty continued to rule as kings of Prussia until 1918. 2 - Became also German Emperor William I, 1871. 3 - Of the Deutsches Reich, or Second Reich. 4 - Of the Deutsches Reich, known as the Weimar Republic. 5 - Of the Deutsches Reich, or Third Reich.

20th-Century Art and Thought.

The era of relative peace and prosperity that preceded World War I gave rise to artistic and intellectual reaction against traditional forms and conceptions. The avant-garde increasingly separated itself from the general public as it experimented with new ideas and techniques. Continuing to flourish in the Weimar period, it was suppressed by the Nazis. Many artists and thinkers emigrated to avoid a state-imposed return to sterotyped tradition. After World War II, German culture slowly recovered.

Art and music.

About 1900, German and Austrian architects and designers employed the graceful floral curves of Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), especially in the Vienna Sezession movement. Closely allied was a new interest in materials and structure, seen in the work of Peter Behrens, J. M. Olbrich (1867–1908), and Walter Gropius. Adaptation of aesthetics to the machine age inspired buildings in the starkly functional International Style developed at the Bauhaus school of design founded by Gropius in Weimar in 1919. The school's principles spread through Europe and the New World.

German expressionist paintings emphasized the artists' feelings instead of objectively describing the outside world. Such painters as E. L. Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky (a Russian), and Paul Klee (a Swiss) used strident colors and distorted forms. In the 1920s Otto Dix and Max Beckmann painted bitter social commentaries. Surrealist interests influenced Klee and Max Ernst. Kandinsky created the first nonrepresentational works.

In music, Richard Strauss and Carl Orff wrote innovative program works. At the same time, Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Anton von Webern and Alban Berg devised a revolutionary twelve-tone music that abandoned traditional melodies and harmonies for emphasis on rhythm and dissonance. The level of music education and performance remained high.

Literature and thought.

Writers such as Franz Werfel, the poets Stefan George, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Rainer Maria Rilke, and the psychological novelists Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Franz Kafka turned from realistic description of the world to an expressionistic exploration of the mind and spirit. Often they used myth, symbol, and exaggerated language to convey inner truths, frustrations, ironies, ambiguities, and subconscious forces. Social criticism was the primary purpose of the playwrights Arthur Schnitzler, Frank Wedekind, and Carl Sternheim (1878–1942). Bertolt Brecht's narrative epic theater in Berlin in the 1920s attacked capitalist society. Expressionism influenced German film directors such as Robert Wiene (1881–1938), G. W. Pabst (1885–1967), and Fritz Lang, who produced work of great originality. After World War II such novelists as Uwe Johnson, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass continued to analyze German society.

A great influence on expressionism in the arts was the new science of psychoanalysis developed about 1900 by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis seemed to undermine confidence in the progress of a rational human race in an orderly universe by focusing on the uncharted, amoral depths of the subconscious. Belief in rational, liberal Christianity was specifically attacked by the Swiss neoorthodox theologians Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. Existentialism, as developed by the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers and the theologian Paul Tillich, sought to integrate religion, art, and science.

DIVISION, OCCUPATION, AND REUNIFICATION

The occupation of Germany at the end of World War II led to the creation of two separate German states, one dominated by the USSR, the other allied with the West. Not until Communism collapsed in the late 1980s did Germany again become a single nation.

Allied Occupation.

Germany's unconditional surrender ended the Third Reich. The Allies reduced Germany to its prewar western boundaries and assigned a large portion on the east to Poland. Setting up four occupation zones, they tried war criminals and dismantled factories. But as their policies diverged, Germany was split into two parts. Britain, the U.S., and, eventually, France wanted to rebuild Germany into a major Western European power capable of countering the expansionist tendencies of the Soviet Union. In 1948 they merged their zones into one region, supplied with U.S. aid, and encouraged the Germans to form a democratic government. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, imposed a Communist German government, under Soviet domination, on East Germany. In 1949 this practical polarization of Germany was legalized by the creation of two German states.

Divided Germany.

The division of Germany and of its capital, Berlin, was both a product and a symbol of the cold war. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), allied with the U.S. and Western Europe, joined NATO and the European Community (now the European Union). The GDR, allied with the USSR, joined the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. The FRG developed into a parliamentary democracy with a stable political system and a booming economy. The GDR, tightly controlled by the Communists and closely aligned with Moscow, also made a strong economic recovery, although it was soon outstripped by its western rival. The increasingly evident gap in living standards between the FRG and the GDR contributed to the flight of East Germans from East to West Berlin and from there to the FRG. To stem this tide of emigration, the GDR government in 1961 built the fortified Berlin Wall along the line dividing East and West Berlin.

A period of détente between the U.S. and USSR in the early 1970s was matched by an improvement of relations between the FRG and the GDR, sparked by leadership changes in East Germany and by the Ostpolitik (”eastern policy”) of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. In 1973 the two German nations established full diplomatic contact and were admitted to the UN. Inter-German relations continued to improve during the 1980s.

Germany Reunited.

Beset by economic woes in the late 1980s, the government of the GDR fell apart in 1989. After the Berlin Wall was breached in November, and many thousands of East Germans began crossing freely into the West, FRG Chancellor Helmut Kohl seized the opportunity to press for rapid reunification. Free elections were held in East Germany in March 1990, and economic, monetary, and social union between East and West Germany took effect on July 1. On October 3 of that same year, in accordance with the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, the GDR formally acceded to the FRG, and Germany became a single nation.

The coalition led by Kohl scored a decisive victory in the all-German elections of December 1990. The newly elected combined Bundestag named Berlin the capital of Germany on June 20, 1991, although the transfer of administration from Bonn, which had been the capital of the FRG, was not completed until the end of the decade. The effort to rebuild eastern Germany strained the nation's resources and society in the early and mid-1990s, as sluggish economic growth and rising unemployment contributed to an upsurge of neo-Nazi violence, especially against immigrants. Kohl won reelection as chancellor by a very narrow majority in late 1994, but parliamentary elections in September 1998 brought his 16-year tenure to an end. The Social Democratic party of Germany (SPD) formed a government in alliance with the reform coalition Alliance 90/The Greens, and SPD leader Gerhard Schröder became chancellor.

Germany's participation in the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia, beginning in March 1999, marked the first time German troops had been involved in a foreign conflict since the end of World War II. In April the German parliament moved from Bonn to the renovated Reichstag in Berlin. Johannes Rau (1931–2006), the former premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and a prominent SPD leader, was elected to the largely ceremonial office of federal president in May. As 2000 began, Germany faced its worst political scandal of recent decades, involving large cash contributions illegally made to the Christian Democrats while Kohl was chancellor. In February 2001, German prosecutors dropped a criminal investigation of Kohl after he agreed to pay a fine of 300,000 marks (about $142,000).

The stagnant German economy failed to revive during Schröder's first term in office, and he faced steep odds in the parliamentary elections of September 2002. Although Germany participated in U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan (and, later, in a NATO peacekeeping force there), Schröder vehemently opposed the U.S.-led military buildup against Iraq. His election-year appeal to antiwar and anti-American sentiment within Germany soured relations with the U.S., but it enabled his SPD-Green coalition to win a slim majority in the Bundestag. Horst Köhler (1943–    ), a Polish-born economist who served as managing director of the International Monetary Fund, became federal president in July 2004.

Germany's economic slump persisted during Schröder's second term; at the beginning of 2005 the jobless rate hit 12 percent, leaving more than 5 million people unemployed. Early elections, called for September, resulted in a slim plurality for supporters of Angela Merkel, the conservative leader of the Christian Democratic Union, but neither Merkel nor Schröder found it easy to muster majority support in the Bundestag. After extensive maneuvering, Schröder stepped aside, and Merkel took office in November as Germany's first female chancellor, heading a “grand coalition” that included the Christian Democrats, the Christian Social Union, and the SPD.

For further information on this topic, see the Bibliography, sections [652. Romanesque art and architecture, 653. Gothic art and architecture, 657. Baroque art and architecture, 658. Romanticism, [659. Impressionism, 660. History of modern art, 661. Modern art and architecture, 724. Music, Western, 842. German, Austrian literature, 901. Renaissance, 906. Enlightenment, Age of, 933. General Germany, 934. Modern German history, 935. Berlin, 936. Hanseatic League, 937. Holy Roman Empire, 938. Prussia, 939. Franco-Prussian Warr, 940. National Socialism, 941. German Federal Republic (West), 942. German Democratic Republic (East).