Plate 3.
The view towards Alexanderplatz in East Berlin in the 1980s. At the end, the television tower
dwarfs the Marienkirche; on the left, the rebuilt Cathedral faced the new East German ‘Palace of the
Republic’, built on the site of the former Royal Palace, on the right.
And, in a dramatic fashion, the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989
symbolised the passing of an era. With the revolutionary changes in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, the ‘Iron Curtain’ began to crumble.
As communist rule collapsed in the East, economic and political pressures
combined to produce the unexpectedly rapid, unprecedented unification of two
very different systems and societies in October 1990. For observers of the new,
united Germany of the early twenty-first century, history takes on a new
significance, as once again – as so many times over the centuries – the issue of
Germany’s character, form, and role in Europe and the world gains prominence.
Yet with the end of the Cold War the character of world alignments and tensions
changed too. With international terrorism and new conflicts, the ‘German
problem’ came to be seen in a very different light.
So much for initial appearances and observations. There is much more to
German history, society, culture and political life than can be gained from
travelling impressions. There are, too, many aspects of the German past which
have been neglected, repressed, transformed, or simply ignored. We must now
begin to explore the broad outlines of the twists and turns of German history
which have led to the Germany we see today.
2
Mediaeval Germany
◈
THE BEGINNINGS OF GERMAN HISTORY
The area now known as Germany shows evidence of settlement since prehistoric
times: Neanderthal man is a well-known archaeological find, and there are traces
of stone, bronze and iron-age settlements right across central Europe. The
Roman Empire extended across the western and southern parts of what is now
known as Germany, and there are Roman foundations and remains in many
German towns, such as Trier, Augsburg, Mainz, Cologne, Regensburg and
Passau. A frontier fortification (essentially a ditch and bank) known as the
limes
can still be seen between the rivers Main and Danube. The Roman Empire had
considerable impact on those parts which it occupied. Beyond it lay what the
Romans called ‘barbarians’ (meaning foreigners). The Roman author Tacitus (c.
AD
55–116) gives us an intriguing, if not entirely reliable, glimpse of the
Germanic tribes in his
Germania
. He describes their social and political
organisation, their modes of warfare, concepts of crime and punishment, styles
of housing, dress and hairstyle, their marriage practices, funerals, agricultural
techniques, and habits of drinking, banqueting, quarrelling and sloth. Apart from
praise for the chastity of German women, Tacitus’ description of Germany and
the Germans is not entirely flattering: the Germans must be a native people, not
immigrants from elsewhere, for ‘who would . . . [want] to visit Germany, with its
unlovely scenery, its bitter climate, its general dreariness to sense and eye, unless
it were his home?’ There are more qualified descriptions of differences among
the individual Germanic tribes, ranging from the Swabians with their intricate
hairdos, through the relatively civilised Hermunduri who traded with the
Romans, to the far-flung Fenni (living in what became Lithuania) who are
characterised as ‘astonishingly wild and horribly poor. They eat grass, dress in
skins, and sleep on the ground.’
By the beginning of the fifth century
AD
the Roman Empire was in crisis.
While the causes of its collapse are various, the fall of the western part was
precipitated by the invasions of barbarian tribes – Visigoths, Vandals and Huns
(whose names have become enduring concepts) – across already weakening and
overstretched frontiers. Those Germans who settled on Roman land tended to
abandon tribal gods and convert to Christianity. In the sixth and seventh
centuries, a new Romanised form of Germanic society emerged in the west.
The first settled Germanic communities were under the Franks: Clovis
defeated the last Roman governor in Gaul in 486, and established the
Merovingian monarchy. This Frankish empire united certain Germanic tribes,
and eventually included the so-called Alemanni, Saxons and Bavarians. It was
ruled by a certain partnership – replete with tensions – between king, nobility
and church. From the sixth century onwards, monasteries were founded, and
churches built in the countryside, frequently founded by and dependent on the
nobility. The majority of the population lived in a servile status on the land,
although there were distinctions between free peasants and serfs, as well as
differences between manorial estates in the west and the farms in areas which
had not been under Roman occupation. In 751 the Merovingians were deposed
and the Carolingian king Pepin elected; he was also anointed by Frankish
bishops, to lend religious legitimacy in place of royal blood, thus inaugurating
the tradition of kingship as an office conferred by God, although under his
successors this continued to be associated with heathen notions of blood-right.
While at the beginning of the Merovingian period the total land under cultivation
in what was to become Germany had been perhaps 2 per cent, with the rest left
as thick forests or swampy marshes, the Carolingian period saw some increase in
population, with the clearing of forests to establish new villages.
When does the history of ‘Germany’ proper begin? Different historians give
different answers. Some operate with a wide perception of German history as
European history, and are flexible about origins. Others start with the re-
foundation of a ‘Roman’ empire in the west by Charlemagne. Charlemagne had
become king in 771, and had extended Frankish power with the annexation of
Lombardy, Bavaria and Saxony, and the creation of border ‘marches’ in the
south-east, with the establishment of Austria. He had assumed certain imperial
rights, such as coinage, before his formal coronation as Roman Emperor on
Christmas Day in
AD 800
. The emperorship was firmly distinguished from the
kingship; while the latter could be divided among heirs, the former was
supposedly indivisible. There were however continuing difficulties in the course
of the ninth century concerning the unity or partition of the Empire. An apparent
solution was produced in the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Squabbling heirs agreed
to terminate their battles and divide their inheritance between eastern, western,
and middle kingdoms, laying the foundations for the separation of future French
and German states. But with further partitions, and the aspirations of non-
Carolingian nobles to monarchical status, it began to appear that the Empire
would collapse. Of the five independent kingdoms that had emerged by the later
ninth century (West Francia, East Francia, Upper and Lower Burgundy and
Italy), only East Francia remained in Carolingian hands. Even here, central
authority was diminishing. In a situation of virtual civil war combined with
external threats of invasion (Vikings in the north, Arabs in the south and
Magyars in the east), new forms of political organisation began to emerge. The
so-called ‘stem duchies’ of Franconia, Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia and Lorraine (or
Lotharingia) began to develop in the East Frankish realm, in which strong local
leaders who could effectively rally their tribes and defend their territories against
invasion became more important than the weak king. In 911, the east Carolingian
line died out. For some historians, the election of the first German king, Conrad
I, Duke of Franconia, marks the real beginning of the history of ‘Germany’.
Conrad’s somewhat ungracious attempts to suppress the stem duchies which had
elected him ended in failure. On his death in 918, Duke Henry of Saxony was
elected as his successor, indicating the dominance of election over blood-right as
the principle of succession. His own designation of his second son as his
successor broke the tradition of partibility of monarchical inheritance, a further
factor of importance in the development of a specifically German polity.
Map 1.
The division of the Frankish Kingdom at the Treaty of Verdun, 843
Other historians are sceptical about the existence of a ‘kingdom of Germany’
at this early date. As Gillingham points out, Henry I’s effective rule was limited
to the duchies of Saxony and Franconia; his authority elsewhere was very
fragile. It was not until the eleventh century that the term ‘regnum Teutonicum’
was used. Other historians, such as Fleckenstein, argue that there was
nevertheless a growth in the sense of a ‘German identity’ before the label, and
that the reigns of Henry I and his son Otto I marked decisively the character of
the emerging kingdom. Yet even by the later middle ages, there are grounds for
doubting whether the German-speaking lands constituted a single polity. In the
middle of the fourteenth century, the plural
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