When we talk about German history we are talking about two separate things: the history of the area that roughly corresponds to the territory of Germany today, and the history of Germany as a nation state.
While the history of Germany as a nation state is still relatively young, the history of the German territory stretches back thousands of years. Throughout most of its history, Germany has been a collection of independent states, kingdoms and principalities. It wasn’t until the 19th century that a widespread feeling of national belonging was created and Germany evolved into the nation as we know it today. This page charts some key events in that process.
Here is a brief, potted history of the area we now know as Germany:
Archaeological finds suggest that early humans were living in Germany hundreds of thousands of years ago. Among the discoveries made in Germany are a complete set of hunting weapons dating back 380.000 years; a range of ivory sculptures; flutes made of bird bone; the earliest known Venus figurine, carved from the tusk of a woolly mammoth around 35.000 years ago; and the 41.000-year-old Löwenmensch figurine, the oldest uncontested figurative work of art.
These archaeological findings suggest that early Germanic peoples probably occupied much of northern Germany during the Bronze and early Iron Ages, while people speaking Celtic languages occupied much of southern Germany. Over time, the Germanic groups expanded southwards, where the existing population was gradually Germanised.
The first accounts of people living in this region come in around 50 BCE, when Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars brought the Romans into contact with Germanic and Celtic peoples. The River Rhine marked the eastern boundary of the Roman-created province of Gaul, and Caesar used the word Germania to refer to the unconquered areas beyond the river.
Although Roman forces did stage offensives into this territory, multiple setbacks - including the now-infamous victory of the Germanic leader Arminius over three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD - convinced the Romans that a full territorial advance into Germania would require too much effort, although commercial and cultural contacts between Germanic peoples and the Roman Empire continued.
Much of our evidence for how these Germanic tribes lived comes from Roman observations, for instance in the work Germania, written by the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus. He describes the Germani as having blue eyes, reddish hair and large, imposing bodies. Archaeological evidence has shown that they practised agriculture, lived in wooden houses, were nonliterate, and did not use money.
The relatively peaceful coexistence between Germanic peoples and the Romans was upended when the nomadic Huns began to push into Europe from the east. German peoples like the Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Saxons, Franks and Ostrogoths staged incursions into the Roman Empire in multiple waves in the fourth and fifth centuries. In 410, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths and the rising power of independent Germanic successor states brought the Western Roman Empire to an end in 476.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, large parts of what had previously been called Germania became part of the Frankish Empire. By 500, Clovis I of the Merovingian dynasty had united the Frankish tribes and was proclaimed King of the Franks. Over the next two centuries, Clovis and his successors brought much of what would later become Germany under Frankish control by conquering the Thuringians, the Alemanni and the Bavarians.
In the 7th century, the Carolingians began to eclipse the Merovingians as the dominant power in the region, and in 751 Pippin III of the Carolingian dynasty was anointed King of the Franks. His son, Charlemagne (also known as Charles the Great), became king in 768 and launched a decades-long military campaign to bring the Lombards, the Saxons, the Bavarians and the Avars into the Carolingian Empire, a huge territory covering present-day France, Germany, northern Italy and the Low Countries.
On Christmas Day in 800, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III - reviving a title that had been out of use for over three centuries, and establishing what would later become known as the “first German Reich”.
Following the death of Charlemagne’s son, Louis I in 840, Carolingian Germany fell into three years of civil war as his three sons fought over their inheritance. Ultimately, the wars ended in the division of the Carolingian Empire into three parts - West Francia, Middle Francia or Lotharingia, and East Francia.
In 951, Otto I, the ruler of the Eastern Frankish Kingdom (or East Francia) came to the aid of Queen Adelaide of Italy and married her. This made Otto King of Germany and King of Italy, and so in 962, he was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope John XII, intertwining the affairs of the German kingdom with those of Italy and the Papacy.
However, this title obscures the true reach of the emperor’s power. The Holy Roman Empire was not a centralised state but instead divided into dozens of individual entities governed by kings, dukes, counts, bishops, abbots and others, who were known as prince-electors, as they elected the emperor. To secure their positions and purchase the support of the prince-electors, emperors were forced to give away more and more of their crown lands and revenues, weakening their position.
At the same time, petty rivalries between families saw them regularly put up rival emperors in disputed elections - it was not uncommon to have two or three men named emperor simultaneously - and overall watered down the significance of the title. Anxious to prevent any single dynasty from amassing too much power, the prince-electors blocked attempts by families to pass the title of emperor from father to son, effectively preventing any stability.
The Hohenstaufen dynasty, which began in 1125, and especially the reign of Emperor Frederick I, also known as Barbarossa for his red beard, represented the final throes of the empire’s overarching power. Since he was largely absent from Germany while trying to establish rule in Italy, Barbarossa granted several powers to the prince-electors to enable them to rule effectively. Eventually, the emperor held little authority over the individual territories, which began to function more like modern nation states.
By the late 14th century, the division of Germany into numerous loosely-defined territories was greatly advanced, and constantly in flux as marriages, deaths, inheritances, partitions, purchases and conquests took place. This rapid division was hastened by inheritance practices at the time, which saw territories divided between a ruler’s sons upon their death - at its height, the empire covered more than 1.700 territories.
Within each of these territories, lesser nobles disputed the power of the local prince-elector, forming alliances with others to defend their interests while self-governing cities fought to protect their freedoms and created leagues to resist the overarching control of the princes.
During the 13th and 14th centuries, the major trading cities of the north, including Munster, Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck, joined to form the Hanseatic League. While the League began initially as a collection of loosely associated traders and towns aiming to expand their mutual commercial interests, over time the arrangement evolved into a bigger political and economic entity that dominated maritime trade and enjoyed considerable legal autonomy.
During this period, the population of German territories declined significantly, first with the Great Famine in 1315, and then the Black Death of 1348 to 1350, which killed an estimated third of Europe’s population. At the same time, arts and culture flourished: around 1439 Johannes Gutenberg perfected moveable type printing and issued his Gutenberg Bible, paving the way for the mass-printing of texts, the democratisation of knowledge, and the Protestant Reformation.
As the fact that the Papacy anointed emperors of the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates, the church had long been embroiled in political affairs. Towards the end of the 15th century, however, a general feeling began to spread that the Roman Catholic Church needed correction. Numerous factors were at play, but a perceived lack of spirituality among leaders and the widespread selling of indulgences, which were said to diminish the recipient’s sins, by members of the clergy were chief among them.
In 1517, the monk Martin Luther published a pamphlet of 95 theses, detailing corruption in the church, and posted them in the square of his home town of Wittenberg (whether he actually nailed them to the church door is a matter of debate). Luther’s belief struck a chord with popular sentiment at the time, and the Protestant Reformation, the first successful challenge to the Catholic Church, began - helped to spread by cheap mass copies of the theses, made possible by Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation began in 1545 with the Council of Trent, and had the intention of challenging and containing the Reformation - but by 1555 the Peace of Augsburg had recognised the validity of the Lutheran faith and officially made permanent the division of Christianity within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism.
Gradually, most of the northern and eastern states became Protestant, while the southern and western states remained Catholic - a fault line that still holds true in Germany today. However, that’s not to say that the treaty brought peace and acceptance: unsolved and recurring conflicts between Catholics and Protestants would continue to flare up in the ensuing centuries, most notably in the Thirty Years’ War of 1618 to 1648.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Prussia and Austria emerged as the biggest and most powerful of the German states, and in 1792 - in the aftermath of the French Revolution - both invaded France in a short-lived war that ended with their defeat at the Battle of Valmy.
Napoleon took control - directly or indirectly - of most of western Europe, including all German states apart from Prussia and Austria, effectively abolishing the now-defunct Holy Roman Empire in 1806. With his new German states, he set up the Confederation of the Rhine.
In 1806, Prussia joined the Fourth Coalition - a multinational coalition fighting against Napoleon’s French Empire - alongside Russia, Saxony, Sweden and Great Britain, but lost to Napoleon in the Battle of Jena. Berlin was occupied and Prussia lost many of its territories in western Germany.
However, just six years later Napoleon suffered a huge military defeat in Russia, and Prussia joined the Sixth Coalition, later joined by Austria. After a series of battles, Napoleon was defeated in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and pushed out of German territories.
During the 1815 Congress of Vienna, where a map for Europe was decided upon following the fall of Napoleon, the 39 former states of the Confederation of the Rhine joined the German Confederation, a loose agreement between 35 ruling princes and four free cities, under Austrian leadership. Prussia, as one of the victors, gained extensive territory and continued to agitate against its rival Austria.
Across Europe, nations were industrialising rapidly, but progress in German territories was hampered by the lack of a uniform currency, legal system and government. In 1848, a range of loosely coordinated protests broke out across Germany (and the rest of Europe), expressing discontent with not just food shortages and widespread poverty, but also the political structure of the independent German states.
They called for a unified Germany with an elected government, and a more free society. In May the German National Assembly met in Frankfurt for the first time to draw up a German constitution. Around this time, the black, red and gold colours that today adorn the German flag were used widely for the first time.
Ultimately, however, the 1848 revolution was unsuccessful and the parliament was dissolved. By 1850 the German Confederation was back in place. Many of the revolution’s leaders went into exile.
In 1857, the Prussian King Frederick William IV had a stroke. In 1861, his brother became King William I, and soon after he named Otto von Bismarck as Prussian Minister President.
At the same time, however, tensions between Prussia and Austria were boiling over, ignited by a dispute over two duchies which were ceded by Denmark. In June 1866, this disagreement broke out into the Seven Weeks War, ending with Austria’s defeat and the dissolution of the German Confederation.
In its place, Prussia established the North German Confederation, a new entity that excluded Austria and effectively ended Austrian control of German affairs. In 1871, during the Siege of Paris, the German princes gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles and announced the establishment of a new German Empire, naming Prussian King Wilhelm I as German Emperor and Bismarck chancellor. This is what would become known as the Second German Reich.
In the following years, seeking protection in the case of another outbreak of hostilities with France, Germany signed alliances with a number of European powers, most notably Austria-Hungary. During this period, Germany - driven by a desire to be seen as a world power, and, thanks to the experience of the Hanseatic League, aware of the riches that could be plundered by claiming territories overseas - established colonies in Africa, Asia and Oceania, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Togo, Ghana, New Guinea, Samoa and many Micronesian islands.
In 1888, Wilhelm I died. He was replaced by his son, Frederick II, who ruled for only 99 days. The position of German Emperor then went to Wilhelm II, who pursued a decidedly more imperial, aggressive political course than his grandfather.
When tensions between aggrandising imperial nations with territorial ambitions broke out into World War I in 1914, Germany was the leading ally of the Central Powers, which included Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and later Bulgaria. Although Germany won some early victories in the war, the entry of the United States into the fray marked a decisive turning point, and in November 1918 Germany surrendered.
Back on the home front, a huge revolt was brewing, as confidence in the emperor began to wane. Wilhelm II and all the German ruling princes abdicated, bringing the German Empire to an end, and on November 9, 1918, the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a German republic.
The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, imposed several punitive restitution measures on Germany, not least the ceding of huge territories to the Allies, the dismantling of its army, and the obligation to pay war reparations amounting to around 30,3 billion euros in today’s money. Germany’s colonies were seized and redistributed among the Allies.
The Weimar Republic - named after the German city where it was established - was Germany’s first constitutional federal republic. It was beset by an extraordinary number of grave problems - including war reparations, hyperinflation and the Great Depression - which meant it was doomed to fail almost from the outset.
The interwar years in Germany were characterised by violent instability, as multiple uprisings and coups were staged. The Communist Party of Germany tried to overthrow the republic in 1919; in 1920, the right-wing politician Wolfgang Kapp also launched a march on Berlin; and in 1923, Adolf Hitler and the newly-formed National Socialist German Workers’ Party staged a failed coup in Munich.
Economic hardship fuelled electoral support for parties on both the left and right, but in 1932 it was the Nazi Party that emerged as the largest single party. In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. The Nazis named their Germany the Third Reich, harking back to the “great empires” of old and attempting to bestow historical legitimacy onto the new regime.
Almost immediately following Hitler’s election, the National Socialists began to methodically dismantle democracy in Germany, rescinding civil liberties and passing legislation to allow Hitler and his cabinet to enact laws on their own without the consent of parliament. Trade unions and all other political parties were suppressed, and antisemitism quickly became a central tenet of Nazi policies, along with increasingly aggressive territorial demands.
Germany quickly re-militarised and annexed its German-speaking neighbours, including some territories that had been lost in the Treaty of Versailles: Germany annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938, and invaded Poland in 1939, sparking the Second World War. Initially, Germany practically swept through the continent, landing success after success and, at its peak, occupying much of continental Europe.
During the war, the Nazis established a systematic genocide programme known as the Holocaust, which murdered 17 million people, including 6 million Jews (representing around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe), Roma, Sinti and Slavic populations, ethnic minorities, gay and bisexual men and physically and mentally disabled people. Nazi political opponents like communists, trade unionists and social democrats, and those with other religious beliefs, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, were also targeted.
The tide began to turn in December 1941, when the German invasion of the Soviet Union stalled and Hitler declared war on the United States. After surrendering in North Africa, the Germans were increasingly on the back foot and, from late 1944, surrounded on all sides as the United States, Canada, France and Great Britain proceeded through western Europe, and the Soviets advanced in the east. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and Germany surrendered a few days later.
After the Second World War, Germany was partitioned into four occupation zones controlled by the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Over time, two separate countries emerged: West Germany (or the Federal Republic of Germany), which was a parliamentary democracy, a member of NATO and a founding member of what would become the European Union; and East Germany (the German Democratic Republic), which was a communist dictatorship and satellite state controlled by the Soviet Union.
By 1961, some 2,6 million people had fled East Germany, moving over to the West, and as tensions continued to escalate between the two Germanies and their puppet masters, East Germany built a border along the division between the two countries, and a wall to encircle West Berlin, which became a western enclave within East Germany.
During the 1950s and 1960s, West Germany experienced a so-called Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”), a period of rapid reconstruction, development and economic growth. Facing a huge worker shortage that was exacerbated following the construction of the Berlin Wall, West Germany signed bilateral recruitment agreements with many countries, including Turkey, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, Morocco, Portugal and Tunisia, to allow for the recruitment of so-called “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) from abroad for sectors in dire need of employees. By far the most (more than 700.000) came from Turkey.
The initial expectation was that the Gastarbeiter would work in Germany only temporarily, but thanks to a change in the legislation many became permanent residents. Today, around 2,5 million people with a Turkish background live in Germany, making them the country’s largest migrant group.
When communism collapsed in Europe in 1989, a series of rapid changes known as the Peaceful Revolution took place in East Germany, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990.
Franco-German friendship then became the basis for the political integration of Germany into Western Europe and later the European Union. Germany has since played a leading role in the European Union and was one of the main supporters of admitting many eastern European countries into the EU. Between 1998 and 1999, Germany was one of the founding countries of the Eurozone.
Germany remains one of the economic powerhouses of Europe, with the fourth-largest economy in the world. It fared relatively well in the 2008-2009 financial crisis and advocated for massive financial relief during the Eurozone crisis.
Finally, Germany was hugely affected by the European migrant crisis of 2015, as it became a destination of choice for many asylum seekers fleeing conflict and political oppression in African countries and the Middle East. After Angela Merkel opted to “open the borders” to refugees, over 1 million people moved to the country in the space of one year. Many tens of thousands of these migrants have now gained German citizenship and live permanently in a federal republic that has since defined itself as a “country of immigration”.
This German history timeline charts some key German historical events: