History of Germany: a timeline

34 moments in the history of Germany, in order, each with what happened and why it matters.

Eras

  1. Romans and Germanic peoples (50 BC–500)
  2. The medieval Empire (500–1500)
  3. Reformation and religious war (1500–1648)
  4. Prussia, Austria and the old Empire (1648–1806)
  5. Napoleon and the wars of liberation (1806–1815)
  6. Restoration and revolution (1815–1871)
  7. The German Empire (1871–1918)
  8. The Weimar Republic (1918–1933)
  9. Nazi dictatorship and war (1933–1945)
  10. Two German states (1945–1989)
  11. Peaceful revolution and unity (1989–)

Romans and Germanic peoples (50 BC–500)

  1. 9: Arminius defeats Varus — In the year 9, Germanic warriors led by Arminius, a prince of the Cherusci who had served as a Roman officer, trapped three Roman legions under Publius…

The medieval Empire (500–1500)

  1. 25 December 800: Charlemagne is crowned emperor — On Christmas Day 800 Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charles emperor in St Peter's in Rome.
  2. 2 February 962: Otto I is crowned emperor — Otto I, crowned king of the East Franks in Aachen in 936, defeated the Hungarians on the Lechfeld near Augsburg in 955.
  3. 1356: The first general Hanseatic Diet — The Hanse began in the twelfth century as an association of German merchants trading abroad and grew into a league of towns.
  4. c. 1452–1454: Gutenberg prints the Bible — In Mainz, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a way of printing with movable letters cast in metal and a press modelled on the wine press.

Reformation and religious war (1500–1648)

  1. 31 October 1517: Luther's theses against indulgences — On 31 October 1517 Martin Luther, a monk and professor in Wittenberg, sent 95 theses against the sale of indulgences to the Archbishop of Mainz.
  2. 1525: The Peasants' War — In 1524 and 1525 peasants rose up across southern and central Germany, from Upper Swabia to Thuringia.
  3. 1618–1648: The Thirty Years' War — The war began in 1618 with a Protestant revolt in Bohemia and grew into a European war fought mostly on German soil, by armies from the Empire, Spain, Sweden…

Prussia, Austria and the old Empire (1648–1806)

  1. 16 December 1740: Prussia seizes Silesia — When Emperor Charles VI died in October 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg lands.
  2. 6 August 1806: The Holy Roman Empire ends — Napoleon had redrawn the map of Germany.

Napoleon and the wars of liberation (1806–1815)

  1. 16–19 October 1813: The Battle of the Nations at Leipzig — After his disaster in Russia in 1812, Napoleon faced an alliance of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden.
  2. 1814–1815: The Congress of Vienna — From the autumn of 1814 to June 1815 the monarchs and diplomats of Europe met in Vienna to reorder the continent after Napoleon, between balls and banquets;…

Restoration and revolution (1815–1871)

  1. 27 May 1832: The Hambach Festival — On 27 May 1832 some 20,000 to 30,000 people climbed to the ruined castle of Hambach near Neustadt in the Palatinate, which then belonged to Bavaria.
  2. 18 May 1848: The Frankfurt Parliament meets — In March 1848 revolution spread through the German states.

The German Empire (1871–1918)

  1. 18 January 1871: The German Empire is proclaimed — After three wars, against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866 and France in 1870–71, the Prussian minister-president Otto von Bismarck united the German states…
  2. August 1888: Bertha Benz's long-distance drive — In January 1886 Carl Benz had patented his motor car in Mannheim, but hardly anyone wanted to buy one.
  3. 1 August 1914–1918: The First World War — After the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne in Sarajevo, Germany backed Austria-Hungary and declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and on France two…

The Weimar Republic (1918–1933)

  1. 9 November 1918: Germany becomes a republic — The revolution began with a sailors' revolt in Kiel on 3 November 1918 and reached the big cities within days.
  2. 19 January 1919: Women vote, and Weimar gets its constitution — German women won the vote on 12 November 1918 and used it nationally for the first time on 19 January 1919, when the National Assembly was elected.
  3. 1923: Hyperinflation — Germany had paid for the war largely with borrowed and printed money, and afterwards owed reparations to the Allies.

Nazi dictatorship and war (1933–1945)

  1. 30 January 1933: Hitler is made chancellor — On 30 January 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor, urged on by conservatives who believed they could control him.
  2. 9 November 1938: The November pogroms — On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, organised by the Nazi leadership, SA and SS men and their followers attacked Jews across Germany and Austria.
  3. 1 September 1939–1945: Germany invades Poland — Nine days after Hitler and Stalin had secretly agreed to divide Eastern Europe between them, the German army invaded Poland at dawn on 1 September 1939, using…
  4. 20 January 1942: The Wannsee Conference and the Holocaust — On 20 January 1942, in a villa by the Wannsee lake in Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich met senior officials to coordinate the murder of Europe's Jews, which the Nazis…
  5. 18 February 1943: The White Rose — The White Rose was a small circle of students and a professor in Munich who wrote and spread six leaflets against the Nazi regime and its crimes in 1942 and…
  6. 8 May 1945: The war in Europe ends — Hitler killed himself in Berlin on 30 April 1945.

Two German states (1945–1989)

  1. 24 June 1948–1949: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift — On 20 June 1948 the Western Allies brought in a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, in their zones, and within days the shops filled up.
  2. 23 May 1949: The Basic Law, and two German states — On 23 May 1949 the Basic Law, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, was proclaimed in Bonn.
  3. 17 June 1953: The uprising of 17 June — On 16 June 1953 construction workers on East Berlin's Stalinallee stopped work in protest against a ten percent rise in their work quotas.
  4. 1955: The economic miracle and the first guest workers — In the 1950s West Germany's economy grew so fast that people spoke of an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder.
  5. 13 August 1961: The Berlin Wall is built — Since the end of the war some 3.5 million people had left the Soviet zone and the GDR, many of them young and skilled; by the late 1950s more than nine in ten…

Peaceful revolution and unity (1989–)

  1. 9 October 1989: The Leipzig Monday demonstration — In the autumn of 1989 thousands of East Germans were fleeing to the West through Hungary, and those who stayed began to protest.
  2. 9 November 1989: The Wall opens — On the evening of 9 November 1989 Günter Schabowski, a member of the East German leadership, read out a new travel rule at a press conference.
  3. 3 October 1990: Germany is reunited — After the GDR's first free election in March 1990, events moved fast: the Deutsche Mark came to the East on 1 July, and on 12 September the two German states…