|
Page 1 of 3 
HISTORY
Germany, west of the Rhine and south of the Main rivers, was part of the Roman Empire. As the Empire crumbled, local tribes spread across Europe, establishing small kingdoms. The Frankish conqueror Charlemagne, from his court in Aachen, forged a huge empire that covered most of Christian Western Europe. The eastern branch of Charlemagne's empire developed in AD 962 into the Holy Roman Empire, organised under Otto I (Otto the Great).
The house of Habsburg, ruling from Vienna, took control of the empire in the 13th century. A semblance of unity in northern Germany was maintained by the Hanseatic League, a federation of German and Baltic city-states with Lubeck as its centre.
Things would never be the same in Europe after Martin Luther, a scholar from the monastery in Erfurt, nailed his '95 Theses' to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517. Luther opposed the Catholic Church racket involving the selling of so-called 'indulgences', which absolved sinners from temporal punishment. Luther's efforts at reforming the Church gained widespread support, culminating in the Protestant movement and the Reformation.
Tensions between Protestant and Catholic states across Europe led to the catastrophic Thirty Years' War (1618-48). Germany became the battlefield for the great powers of Europe, losing more than one-third of its population and many of its towns and cities.
In the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia, with its capital in Berlin, became one of Europe's strongest powers. Thanks to the organisational talents of Friedrich Wilhelm I (the Soldier King) and his son Friedrich II (Frederick the Great) it expanded eastwards at the expense of Poland, Lithuania and Russia.
After Napoleon's foray into Russia, Prussia led the war that put an end to his German aspirations in a battle at Leipzig in 1813. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna replaced the Holy Roman Empire with a German Confederation of 35 states; it had a parliament in Frankfurt and was led by the Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich.
The well-oiled Prussian civil and military machine eventually smashed this arrangement. In 1866, Otto von Bismarck (the Iron Chancellor) took Prussia to war against Austria and rapidly annexed northern Germany. Another successful war in 1870-71 saw Prussia defeat France and seize the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The Prussian king, Wilhelm I, became Kaiser (German emperor).
When WWI broke out in 1914 Germany's only ally was a weakened Austria-Hungary. Gruelling trench warfare on two fronts sapped the nation's resources and by late 1918 Germany was forced to sue for peace. The Kaiser abdicated and escaped to Holland and a new republic, known as the Weimar Republic, was proclaimed.
Following the war Germany was forced to Pay massive reparations to its WWI foes, the subsequent hyperinflation and miserable economic conditions provided fertile ground for political extremists. One of these was Adolf Hitler, an Austrian drifter, German army veteran, and lousy watercolor painter. Hitler's National (or Nazi) Socialist German Workers' Party staged an abortive coup in Munich in 1923. This landed Hitler in prison for nine months, during which time he wrote his turgid Mein Kampf.
|
