Chapter 01 · c. 9 CE – 911
Germania, Rome and the Frankish Inheritance
Germanic peoples beyond the Rhine resisted Roman conquest, then inherited and reshaped the western Roman world through the Frankish empire of Charlemagne.
In antiquity the lands east of the Rhine and north of the Danube lay beyond the effective reach of Rome. In 9 CE an alliance of Germanic tribes led by Arminius, a Cheruscan chieftain who had served in the Roman army, annihilated three legions under Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The defeat shattered Roman ambitions to provincialise Germania Magna and fixed the Rhine and Danube as the empire's lasting northern frontier. For centuries the term Germania denoted a mosaic of tribal peoples rather than any single polity.
As Roman authority in the west collapsed, Germanic confederations such as the Franks, Saxons, Alemanni and Bavarians settled and consolidated power. The Franks proved the most enduring. Under the Carolingian dynasty, and above all under Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, the Frankish realm expanded to encompass much of western and central Europe and bound the German lands into a Christian imperial order.
Charlemagne's empire did not long survive him intact. By the Treaty of Verdun, concluded in 843, his grandsons partitioned the Frankish realm into three kingdoms. The easternmost portion, East Francia, comprised the German-speaking duchies east of the Rhine and would become the kernel of the medieval Kingdom of Germany and, in time, the Holy Roman Empire.
Turning points
- 9 CEWar & Rupture
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
Germanic tribes under Arminius destroyed three Roman legions commanded by Varus, ending Roman attempts to conquer Germania east of the Rhine and securing the river as a permanent frontier.
See the data - 25 Dec 800Politics & Power
Coronation of Charlemagne
Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans in Rome, reviving the western imperial title and binding the German lands into a renewed Christian empire.
- 843 CEPolitics & Power
Treaty of Verdun
Charlemagne's grandsons divided the Carolingian empire into three kingdoms. East Francia, the German-speaking eastern share, became the foundation of the future Kingdom of Germany.
Figures of the era
Arminiusc. 18 BCE – c. 19 CE
Cheruscan chieftain and war-leader
Trained in the Roman army and granted citizenship, Arminius turned his knowledge against Rome to forge a tribal coalition that destroyed Varus's legions in 9 CE. Later German nationalism mythologised him as 'Hermann', a founding hero, though his historical aims were tribal rather than national.
Charlemagne747/748 – 814
King of the Franks and Emperor
The greatest of the Carolingian rulers, Charlemagne united much of western Europe under Frankish rule and was crowned emperor in 800. Both German and French traditions claim him; the partition of his empire in 843 set the German lands on their own path.
Chapter sources: Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, Charlemagne, Treaty of Verdun
Chapter 02 · 962 – 1648
The Holy Roman Empire and the Reformation
A sprawling, decentralised empire of princes, free cities and bishoprics gave the German lands their political form, until religious schism plunged them into a generation of war.
On 2 February 962 the East Frankish king Otto I was crowned emperor by Pope John XII in Rome, joining the German kingdom with the Kingdom of Italy and founding what became known as the Holy Roman Empire. For more than eight centuries this elective monarchy provided a constitutional roof over a patchwork of hundreds of duchies, principalities, ecclesiastical territories and free imperial cities. Real power lay less with the emperor than with the territorial princes and the prince-electors who chose him, producing a uniquely fragmented yet durable political order at the heart of Europe.
The empire's spiritual unity fractured in the sixteenth century. On 31 October 1517 the Augustinian friar Martin Luther circulated his Ninety-five Theses attacking the sale of indulgences; printed and distributed within weeks, they ignited the Protestant Reformation. Luther's translation of the Bible into German shaped the modern language and gave reform a popular reach. The resulting conflict between Catholic and Protestant territories was contained, for a time, by the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which let each prince determine the religion of his own lands under the principle cuius regio, eius religio.
That settlement broke down catastrophically in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which began as a religious and constitutional struggle within the empire and drew in the great powers of Europe. Fought largely on German soil, it brought famine, plague and depopulation on a devastating scale. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 ended the war, confirmed the near-sovereignty of the empire's constituent states and entrenched the German lands' political fragmentation for the next two centuries.
“Here I stand; I can do no other.”
— Words traditionally attributed to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, 1521
Turning points
- 2 Feb 962Formation
Otto I crowned emperor
Pope John XII crowned Otto I of East Francia emperor in Rome, uniting the German and Italian kingdoms and founding the Holy Roman Empire that would frame German political life for over 800 years.
- 31 Oct 1517Religion
Luther's Ninety-five Theses
Martin Luther issued his Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences, sparking the Protestant Reformation that split Western Christianity and reshaped German society and language.
- 25 Sep 1555Religion
Peace of Augsburg
The imperial diet established the first lasting legal coexistence of Lutheranism and Catholicism, letting each prince set his territory's religion under the principle cuius regio, eius religio.
- 1618–1648War & Rupture
The Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia
A devastating European war fought largely in Germany ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which confirmed the autonomy of the empire's states and entrenched German fragmentation.
See the data
Figures of the era
Otto I (Otto the Great)912 – 973
King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor
By defeating the Magyars at Lechfeld and securing his coronation in Rome in 962, Otto fused royal and imperial authority and inaugurated the Holy Roman Empire, anchoring the German crown to the imperial title for centuries.
Martin Luther1483 – 1546
Theologian and reformer
Luther's challenge to papal authority and his German Bible transformed religion, politics and language across the empire. Excommunicated and outlawed, he survived under princely protection, and Lutheranism became a defining force in German history.
Chapter sources: Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Ninety-five Theses, Peace of Augsburg, Peace of Westphalia
Chapter 03 · 1648 – 1871
Prussia, Fragmentation and the Road to Unity
The rise of Prussia, the collapse of the old empire under Napoleon and a growing national movement converged in the unification of Germany under Bismarck.
After 1648 the German lands remained divided among hundreds of states, but two powers rose to dominate them: Habsburg Austria and an expanding Prussia. Under the Hohenzollern dynasty, and especially Frederick the Great in the eighteenth century, Prussia became a disciplined military and administrative state that contested Austrian primacy in central Europe.
The old order was swept away by revolutionary France. Defeated repeatedly by Napoleon, the empire collapsed when Emperor Francis II abdicated the imperial crown on 6 August 1806, formally dissolving the Holy Roman Empire after more than 840 years. French domination, however, also spread ideas of nationhood and reform. After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 created a loose German Confederation of sovereign states, frustrating liberals and nationalists whose hopes for a unified, constitutional Germany were crushed when the revolutions of 1848 failed.
Unification was ultimately achieved not by liberal revolution but by Prussian power. As minister-president, Otto von Bismarck pursued unity through 'blood and iron', engineering victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870–71). In the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, the German states were bound into a single empire, proclaimed at Versailles on 18 January 1871 with the Prussian king Wilhelm I as German Emperor.
“The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.”
— Otto von Bismarck, 1862
Turning points
- 6 Aug 1806Politics & Power
Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire
Under pressure from Napoleon, Emperor Francis II abdicated the imperial crown and dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, ending the medieval framework of German statehood after more than eight centuries.
- 1815Politics & Power
Congress of Vienna and the German Confederation
After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna created a loose confederation of German states dominated by Austria and Prussia, leaving national unity unfulfilled.
- 1848–1849Politics & Power
The Revolutions of 1848
Liberal and nationalist uprisings swept the German states, and the Frankfurt Parliament drafted a constitution for a united Germany, but the movement collapsed when the Prussian king refused its imperial crown.
- 18 Jan 1871Formation
Figures of the era
Otto von Bismarck1815 – 1898
Minister-President of Prussia and first Chancellor of the German Empire
The architect of German unification, Bismarck engineered a series of wars and a web of diplomacy that forged the empire in 1871. As chancellor he dominated European politics for two decades and pioneered the first modern welfare-state institutions.
Chapter sources: Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, Germany, Proclamation of the German Empire, 1871
Chapter 04 · 1871 – 1918
The German Empire and the First World War
A newly unified empire rose to industrial and military pre-eminence, then plunged Europe into the First World War and emerged in defeat and revolution.
The German Empire forged in 1871 was a federal monarchy led by Prussia, with an elected Reichstag but real power resting with the emperor and his chancellor. In its first decades the empire industrialised with extraordinary speed, becoming a world leader in steel, chemicals, electrical engineering and science, and a centre of universities, music and scholarship. Bismarck's diplomacy kept the peace in Europe, while his domestic policy combined repression of socialists with the pioneering creation of state social insurance.
After Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in 1890, German policy grew more assertive. A naval arms race with Britain, colonial ambitions and a tangle of alliances raised tensions across Europe. When a crisis erupted in the Balkans in 1914, the system of alliances drew the powers into the First World War, with Germany at the centre of the conflict alongside Austria-Hungary.
Four years of attritional war exhausted the empire. As military defeat became certain in the autumn of 1918 and revolution spread through the country, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November 1918 and a republic was proclaimed. Two days later, on 11 November 1918, an armistice ended the fighting. The empire that had lasted barely half a century was gone, and Germany faced the punitive terms imposed at Versailles.
Turning points
- 1871–1890Economy & Trade
The Bismarckian empire and industrial rise
Under Bismarck's chancellorship the empire industrialised rapidly and introduced the world's first national social insurance, while maintaining a careful balance of power in Europe.
See the data - 1884–1885Colonisation
German colonial expansion
Germany acquired colonies in Africa and the Pacific, a latecomer's empire whose rule, including the genocide of the Herero and Nama in South West Africa, left a brutal legacy.
See the data - 1914–1918War & Rupture
The First World War
Germany fought the First World War as the principal Central Power. Four years of total war devastated a generation and ended in German defeat.
See the data - 9 Nov 1918Politics & Power
Abdication of Wilhelm II
Amid military collapse and revolution, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated and a republic was proclaimed in Berlin; the armistice followed two days later, ending the war and the monarchy.
Figures of the era
Wilhelm II1859 – 1941
Last German Emperor and King of Prussia
Impulsive and ambitious, Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck and steered Germany toward a more aggressive 'world policy'. His reign ended in war, revolution and abdication, closing the chapter of imperial monarchy in Germany.
Chapter sources: Germany
Chapter 05 · 1918 – 1945
Weimar, the Third Reich and the Second World War
Germany's first democracy struggled and fell, giving way to the Nazi dictatorship, the Second World War and the genocide of European Jewry.
Out of defeat and revolution emerged the Weimar Republic, Germany's first parliamentary democracy, whose constitution was adopted in 1919. Burdened by the reparations and territorial losses of the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation, deep political polarisation and the catastrophe of the Great Depression, the republic enjoyed only brief stability. Extremist movements of left and right gained ground as unemployment soared after 1929, and successive governments increasingly ruled by emergency decree.
On 30 January 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, as chancellor. Within months Hitler exploited the Reichstag fire and the Enabling Act to dismantle democracy, ban opposition, and establish a one-party totalitarian dictatorship, the Third Reich. The regime built a police state, persecuted political opponents, and from the outset subjected Jews and other groups to escalating discrimination, violence and exclusion.
Hitler's drive for territorial expansion led to war. Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 began the Second World War in Europe, the deadliest conflict in human history. Under cover of war, the Nazi state carried out the Holocaust, the systematic, industrialised murder of approximately six million European Jews, alongside the killing of Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners, political prisoners and others. After years of total war and immense devastation across Europe, Germany surrendered unconditionally on 8 May 1945. The country lay in ruins, its cities destroyed, its dictatorship and crimes laid bare.
“The history of National Socialism is one of the darkest chapters in German history.”
— German Bundestag, on the years 1933–1945
Turning points
- 1919Politics & Power
The Weimar Republic and its constitution
Germany's first democracy adopted the Weimar Constitution in 1919, establishing a parliamentary republic that would be undermined by economic crisis and political extremism.
- 30 Jan 1933Politics & Power
Hitler appointed chancellor
President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor. Within months the Nazis abolished democracy and established a totalitarian one-party dictatorship.
- 1 Sep 1939War & Rupture
Invasion of Poland
Germany invaded Poland, igniting the Second World War in Europe and beginning six years of conquest, occupation and total war.
See the data - 1941–1945Catastrophe
The Holocaust
Nazi Germany carried out the systematic, state-organised murder of some six million European Jews, alongside the killing of Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners and other victims.
See the data - 8 May 1945War & Rupture
Unconditional surrender
Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending the Second World War in Europe and the Nazi regime amid the ruin of the country.
See the data
Figures of the era
Friedrich Ebert1871 – 1925
First President of the Weimar Republic
A Social Democrat, Ebert helped guide Germany from monarchy to republic in 1918 and served as its first president. He defended the fragile democracy against uprisings from both extremes amid relentless instability.
Chapter sources: The Weimar Republic (1918–1933), The Holocaust and World War II: Key Dates
Chapter 06 · 1945 – present
Division, the Federal Republic and Reunification
Occupied and divided after 1945, Germany was split into a democratic west and a communist east before peaceful reunification in 1990 restored a single democratic state.
After 1945 Germany was occupied and partitioned among the four Allied powers, and the wartime alliance soon dissolved into Cold War. In 1949 the division was formalised: the western zones became the democratic, market-oriented Federal Republic of Germany, whose Basic Law took effect on 23 May 1949, while the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1949. Under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the 'economic miracle', West Germany rebuilt rapidly, integrated into Western Europe and NATO, and became a founding member of the European communities.
Berlin, itself divided, became the sharpest symbol of the split. To halt the flight of its citizens westward, the East German regime began building the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, sealing off East from West for nearly three decades. The communist GDR endured as a one-party state under Soviet influence, while West Germany pursued Ostpolitik, a gradual normalisation of relations with the East.
The division ended with startling speed. As reform swept the Eastern Bloc in 1989, mass protests in East Germany forced open the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. Within a year, negotiations among the two German states and the four wartime Allies cleared the way for unity. On 3 October 1990 the German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic, reuniting Germany as a single democratic state, a date now celebrated as the Day of German Unity.
Reunified Germany has since become the most populous member and largest economy of the European Union, a leading force in European integration and a stable parliamentary democracy. It has confronted its twentieth-century history with unusual openness, making remembrance of the crimes of the Nazi era a foundation of its civic identity.
“On 3 October 1990 Germany was peacefully reunited.”
— On the Day of German Unity
Turning points
- 23 May 1949Politics & Power
Founding of the two German states
The Basic Law established the Federal Republic of Germany in the west on 23 May 1949; the German Democratic Republic was founded in the Soviet zone on 7 October 1949, formalising the country's division.
- 13 Aug 1961Politics & Power
Construction of the Berlin Wall
East Germany began building the Berlin Wall to stop its citizens fleeing west, creating the most potent symbol of the Cold War division of Europe.
- 9 Nov 1989Politics & Power
- 3 Oct 1990Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Konrad Adenauer1876 – 1967
First Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
Adenauer led West Germany from 1949 to 1963, anchoring it firmly in the democratic West, securing reconciliation with former enemies and overseeing the postwar economic recovery that restored German prosperity and credibility.
Helmut Kohl1930 – 2017
Chancellor of reunification
Chancellor from 1982 to 1998, Kohl seized the opening created by the fall of the Wall to drive German reunification in 1990 and championed deeper European integration, including the creation of the euro.
Chapter sources: Germany, Day of German Unity: Facts and History