From the fifth century
AD onwards, the complex and rich history of what is now Germany
is inseparable from that of Central and Western Europe as a whole.
It is often said that the Germanic tribes destroyed the Roman Empire,
but the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Franks who settled in Western
Europe after the deposition of the Emperor Romulus in AD 476 were
anxious to perpetuate some parts of a system which they both admired
and found administratively convenient. Indeed, it was a Frank,
Charlemagne, who revived the Roman Empire in the
West in AD 800, uniting modern-day Germany with France and northern
Italy, albeit only for the 40 years of his own reign and that of
his son, Louis the Pious. The division of Charlemagne’s Empire
was confirmed by the Treaty of Verdun (AD 843), as a result of which
much of what is now Germany passed to Louis’ son, who was
known as Louis the German.
During the next 80 years, Germany fragmented into 5 large duchies,
Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia,
Lorraine and Swabia, whose dukes
managed to establish a de facto hereditary tenure over each of their
respective fiefdoms. The 10th century witnessed a growth in the
power of central authority under the leadership of the House
of Saxony, while in the 11th and early 12th centuries,
under the Salian Dynasty, the power of the crown
was at its height. In 1152, following a disputed succession and
a civil war, the dynamic Frederick Barbarossa acceded
to the throne: he is one of the most significant figures in German
history. Frederick, his son Henry VI and his grandson Frederick
II, made prodigious attempts to revive the reality of royal power
in Germany and Italy, but the task proved impossible and by the
late 13th century the country was seething with civil war.
This period saw the emergence for the first time of the House
of Habsburg. Temporarily deposed by other dynasties during
the next 150 years, Albert V of Habsburg re-established his clan’s
ascendancy in 1438. The Habsburgs were to rule the empire, with
only a brief interruption, until 1806. By this time Germany had
dissolved into a patchwork of over 300 states, some no more than
a town or castle, and increasingly the Habsburg Emperors derived
their power and influence from their extensive family lands.
In 1519, Charles V became Emperor, uniting by his
dynastic connections Spain, the Low Countries, Naples, Sicily, Burgundy,
the Holy Roman Empire and all the Spanish possessions in the New
World. Germany, in common with much of the rest of Europe, was divided
by the Reformation at this time, despite Charles V’s attempts
to impose a religious solution by force. The impossibility of holding
together such a large empire was recognised by Charles himself,
and on his abdication in 1556 the imperial office and the Habsburg
lands passed to his brother Ferdinand I.
Sporadic warfare against the Turks continued, but a more serious
catastrophe was the complex Thirty Years War (1618-48),
during which many of Europe’s disputes were fought out on
German soil. One of the results of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia,
which ended the Thirty Years War, was the emergence of the previously
minor state of Brandenburg-Prussia as a major power.
The territorial gains were built upon by a series of cunning and
ruthless rulers and, by the early 18th century, the new kingdom
was the scourge of other European states, not least the Habsburg
Empire. Frederick the Great is the king most strongly
associated with the growth of Prussian militarism. When the moribund
Holy Roman Empire – not inaccurately described by a contemporary
as ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire’ –
was formally abolished by Napoleon in 1806 (by which time the Habsburgs
had already assumed the title of Emperors of Austria), much of its
northern and eastern parts had already been absorbed by Prussia.
After 1815 the German Confederation was established with 39 states.
German unification continued apace throughout the century, the most
influential figure in the process being Count Otto von Bismarck,
Chancellor under Emperor Wilhelm I. Various wars, both offensive
and defensive, were fought with other European states, of which
the most notable was the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).
In the following decades, an increasingly complex web of treaties,
including the Dual and Triple Alliances of 1878 and 1892,
and diplomatic liaisons evolved, which managed to contain temporarily
the increasingly ambitious policies of the major European states
and their empires. A revolt in Serbia finally shattered
the illusion of European security, precipitating a complex chain
of events which led to World War I.
The year after the end of World War I in 1919, Germany adopted a
democratic constitution. This was the foundation of what became
known as the Weimar Republic, named after the former
capital of the Saxe-Weimar grand duchy and located in the modern
Land of Thüringen. However, assailed by serious domestic political
instability compounded by the Great Depression of the 1920s and
30s, which hit Germany severely, Weimar paved the way for the rise
of Adolf Hitler’s Nationalist Socialists who took power following
the general election of 1933. Hitler sought to reverse the perceived
humiliation imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles by initiating
a major rearmament programme that no other European power seemed
inclined to challenge. He next set about creating the Third Reich,
first by merger (the Anschluss) with Austria, then annexation of
the Czech Sudetenland, followed by Czechoslovakia itself. When Hitler
threatened Poland, the UK and France drew the line: from there,
it was a short route to World War II. After 6 years
of global warfare, at an estimated cost of 60 million lives, the
German army was defeated in 1945 by the allied armies of the USA,
the USSR, the UK and others. This produced the post-war division
of Europe into Western and Soviet spheres of influence.
Germany was divided into 2 parts: the eastern, Soviet-controlled
portion became the German Democratic Republic (GDR);
the western part emerged to become the Federal Republic
of Germany. The city of Berlin, which
lay within the GDR, was itself divided into allied and Soviet-controlled
zones.
East Berlin became the capital
of the GDR while the isolated West Berlin was attached
to the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic was established in
September 1949, under the supervision of the three Western allied
powers, the USA, the UK and France.
Federal politics adopted the familiar pattern of Social Democratic
(SPD) and centre-right Christian Democrat (CDU) parties typical
of most of Western Europe. The dominant political figure of the
era was Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor between 1949
and 1963. Adenauer and his Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard
were the principal architects of the country’s phenomenal
economic growth after 1945. A major foundation of this was the European
Coal and Steel Community, under which the Federal Republic and France,
together with several smaller neighbours, established a free trade
area in these products. This was the basis of the European
Economic Community, which was formally established by the
1960 Treaty of Rome. The Christian Democrats remained in power until
1972, at which point the SPD took control of the Bundestag
(Parliament) under the leadership of Willi Brandt.
Brandt resigned in 1974 and was replaced by Helmut Schmidt.
Brandt initiated Ostpolitik under which peaceful co-operation became
the centrepiece of relations with the GDR, it was conceived as an
alternative to the sterility of the Cold War. The Soviets had sponsored
the creation of the GDR in October 1949 and granted formal independence
to the country 5 years later.
During the 1950s, the GDR embarked on a full-scale
programme of socialist development complete with wholesale agricultural
reform and breakneck industrial construction. Popular discontent
with some of the policies culminated in a series of uprisings throughout
the decade, notably in 1953, which were put down forcefully. Political
power in the GDR was vested solely in the hands of the Sozialistische
Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED – Socialist Unity
Party), an amalgam of leftist and pre-war anti-fascist parties dominated
by the Communist Party. Walter Ulbricht was succeeded
as Party First Secretary in 1971 by Erich Honecker, who remained
in the post almost until the end of the GDR. As with West Germany,
relations with the ‘other’ Germany dominated the political
agenda in the GDR. Ostpolitik was continued by Brandt’s successor,
Helmut Schmidt, and by the Government which took office after the
SPD lost its overall majority at the 1980 election. This was a coalition
of the SPD and the small centrist Free Democrats, then led by Hans-Dietrich
Genscher, who became West Germany’s Foreign Minister
for the next 12 years.
The SPD-FPD coalition collapsed in 1982 after which the Free Democrats
promptly switched sides and teamed up with the right-wing Christian
Democrats (CDU) under Helmut Kohl. This provided
the launch-pad for the most successful political career in post-war
German history. Kohl won 4 consecutive polls before his eventual
defeat in 1998, but more importantly, he presided over German reunification.
This dramatic process began in 1985 with the accession of Mikhail
Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Communist party, and steadily
gathered momentum until its climax at the end of 1989 with the fall
of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the East
German state. The first and the last , free election for a national
GDR leadership was held in March 1990. Victory went to the Alliance
for Germany coalition led by Lothar de Mazière and
firmly backed by Chancellor Kohl and the CDU.
The final decision on unification was not, of course, exclusively
one for the Germans and agreement of the wartime Allies was required.
Washington was enthusiastic, while Paris, London and surprisingly
Moscow, were lukewarm but not obstructive. Unified Germany, with
nearly 80 million people and twice the GNP of the EU’s next
largest member, dominates the Union economically. The first united
German government was elected in December 1990. As expected, Chancellor
Kohl’s CDU-controlled alliance won a comfortable majority
in the Bundestag.
The opposition social-democratic SPD was in disarray at this point,
awaiting a new leadership generation which would not emerge until
the late 1990s. From 1995 onwards, a new leadership under would-be
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder emerged to challenge a
Kohl government now entering a stale twilight period. The SPD duly
won the 1998 general election and, after 17 years as Chancellor
and 25 years as party leader, Kohl stood down. Since then he has
become embroiled in a number of political scandals which may yet
have serious consequences for German politics. Kohl’s successor
as CDU leader, Edward Stoiber, was widely expected
to win the September 2002 general election. However, with a cleverly
worked campaign which drew in part on widespread popular concern
about a future Middle East war, Schröder out-manoeuvred the
Christian Democrats and held on to power.
Schröder
has sought to continue Helmut Kohl’s aim of a more activist
German foreign policy. Along with French president Jacques Chirac,
Schröder has opposed much Anglo-American policy in the Middle
East. (Although not a permanent member, Germany currently sits on
the UN Security Council). Germany has also been heavily involved
in diplomatic and military activities in the Balkans, where it has
been allied closely with Croatia. And the Franco-German alliance
is still at the heart of the EU and its programmes of expansion,
economic and political integration. As elsewhere in Europe, immigration
and asylum have become major political issues, Germany hosts the
largest number of immigrants of any EU nation, and the debate has
coincided with the growth of violent neo-Nazism. |
