What do you want to know about German history?

[Freodin]

... beyond the well known and discussed Nazi era?

Ask away, and I will try to provide an answer.

 

[oldrooster]

What do you think of the outcome of the last election there ?

 

[Freodin]

What do you think of the outcome of the last election there ?

From a historcial point of view:

Schroeder has won - by a very small margin. The results showed that the conservative opposition did not get much support - most of the votes for their candidate, Bavarian primeminister Edmund Stoiber came from Bavaria - and these provided the vast majority of conservative votes.

My personal oppinion? Hey, I AM from Bavaria - and I would have loved to see Stoiber go to Berlin, so that we would have been rid of him.

 

[oldrooster]

Better to affect a little than the whole.....
One more question, how much has the cost of reunification affected the average German citizen ?

 

[Freodin]

Better to affect a little than the whole.....
One more question, how much has the cost of reunification affected the average German citizen ?

The direct effect for a citizen is the additional "tax" everyone has to pay - the "Solidaritätszuschlag" (solidarity addition).
It isn´t much, 5,5% of the income tax, but in addition to the raised taxes, raised unemployment, raised costs for living it hurts.

But the bigger problem are the empty coffers of the communities, due to the economical situation as well the the vast amounts of money that were transfered to the east.

 

[oldrooster]

I was wondering what the percentage was. My grandparents were born in Konigsburg, I have always been interested in the ost.

 

[Tini]

Are there still any of the royal families in Germany and what part do they play in society today?

My brother in law is German and stays in the Pflaz. I dont see much of him (3 times in 8 years!). I'd like to et to know him and Germany better.

 

[Freodin]

I was wondering what the percentage was. My grandparents were born in Konigsburg, I have always been interested in the ost.

Königsberg - is that what you mean? Well, that is even further to the east. It was the captial of the old province of East-Prussia. That is russian territory today. Germany ends at the river Oder nowadays.

 

[Freodin]

Are there still any of the royal families in Germany and what part do they play in society today?

My brother in law is German and stays in the Pflaz. I dont see much of him (3 times in 8 years!). I'd like to et to know him and Germany better.

Most of the "royal" (that is, of high nobility) families still exist. Otto von Habsbug is the head of the family from which most of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire came from, and the Austrian Emperors after that.
He was a longtime member of the European Parliment for a conservative party.
In Germany, the Hohenzollern - the line of the Prussian kings, of Emperor Willhelm II, still exist. The Wittelsbachers, the old Kings of Bavaria still exist.
And there are many more.

Mostly they don´t play an active political role. Many of them act as administrators of trusts that hold their old family possessions. Inheritance taxes make it difucult for noble families, if your possession consist of nothing but old castles and works of art that you are forbidden to sell.
Most of the old noble possessions, lands, castles and collections are in federal possession of course.

 

[Tini]

Tell me a bit about Barbarossa (the original).

 

[Tini]

What are some of the really interesting facts about German history that you would like to share with an outsider and that you think we dont know, but should know.

 

[oldrooster]

Sorry for the spelling, oder-neisse line if I am not mistaken.

 

[Freodin]

Tell me a bit about Barbarossa (the original).

Is there a fake one?

Friedrich "Barbarossa" (Redbeard) of Hohenstaufen was elected German King in 1152. In his time, there was a major division in Germany between the powerfull families of the Hohenstaufen, also called Waiblinger after there ancestral castle at Waiblingen, and the ducal family of the Welfs.

The Welfs ruled the powerfull duchy of Saxony, which had been the home of many previous kings, and had claims to the second great duchy in Germany, Bavaria. For some decades, there had been strive, even civil war, and Friedrich, related to the Welfs by his mother was hope to bring peace.

And indeed he did. He made peace with his powerfull cousin, Duke Heinrich the Lion of Saxony, and even handed him his claimed Bavaria. Munich, the capital of Bavaria was founded by this Duke Heinrich.
The former duke of Bavaria, another Heinrich, was made duke of Austria, which until then had been a border province of Bavaria.

In 1154, with Germany at peace, he was able to go to Italy - part of the Empire, and get crowned as Holy Roman Emperor. After that, Italy demanded a lot of his attention. The weathly north-italian cities did favour the Emperor as counter to the advances of papal power, but they didn´t like to be subject to imperial control at all. The cities rebellion was crushed mercyless by Barbarossa. Milano was captured and destroyed in 1162.
But then plagues in the imperial army -the biggest problem for German armies in Italy during the middle ages - forced him to withdraw. As soon as he was gone, the Lombardian cities rebelled again.
It took until 1176 that a compromise peace was made. The Lombardian cities were given the right of self-ruling, the begin of the Italian city states of the renaissance era.
A troubeling point at that last campaign had been the falling out with his powerfull cousin and subject, Duke Heinrich the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria. Ultimately that led to the demise of Welf power. He had simply accumulated too much power in a single hand to be suffered by the king and the other princes. The division of his lands, especially the old tribal duchy of Saxony marked the beginn of the German particularism.
In a last endeavor to Italy, Friedrich managed to get his son Heinrich married to the heiress of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Ultimately, that brought that kingdom under imperial control. Friedrich´s grandson, the famous Friedrich II, called "stupor mundi" (The delight of the world) by his friend, and Anti-Christ by his enemies, was born there.

Friedrich Barbarossa´s last endeavor was the participation in the third crusade
. He died while taking a bath in a small river in what is now Turkey, in 1190.

 

[Freodin]

What are some of the really interesting facts about German history that you would like to share with an outsider and that you think we dont know, but should know.

All of history is full of "really interesting facts", so I would not know where to start.
I started this post because I find it sad that many people, especially in the US, reduce Germany to "Hitler" and "militarism".
Of course the Third Reich is an important part of our history, but not the only one. All that came before is important in order to show why that could happen, and it is important in its own right.

Ah, here we have an interesting fact! Officially, there never was a first, nor a second Reich. In fact, there never was a first "German" empire.

The people in the early middle ages did not think in terms of nations - they though in tribes.
The main germanic tribe on which the later "Germany" was founded were the Franks. The successors of the franconian King Charles the Great (better known as Charlemagne) divided, after old germanic custom, the realm of their father between his sons. This division stuck: the latin west-franconian kingdom became France, the germanic eastern part Germany.
But even these early "German" kingdom was not "Germany" - it was still the Kingdom of the Eastern Franks. The only "national" ingredient that was recognized was that they all spoke the same language. "The way the people speak" and "The way the others speak" was the main distinction between east and west. From the old german word for "people" "Thiut" came the name of the land - "Deutsch" (The English still use "Dutch" for the Netherlands - this comes from the same root).

But even that was not a nation. It was a confederation of tribes, united by a common monarch. The important part came from this monarch having the sole right to be crowned Roman Emperor. This - the succession of the old Roman Empire - said the be the last empire before the end times was the definition of the Empire.
So the "First" Reich (which means "empire") was the Roman Empire, hold by the germanic princes of the eastern Franks. After the control of the Emperor over the Italian part of this empire had waned, in the last middle ages, the empire´s title was further specified: "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" (though nation was not used in the sense we do it today).

This HRE continued until 1806. At that time, the Empire being a unified state was only a fiction. When Napoleon formed his Confederacy of the Rhine, the last Holy Roman Emperor, Franz II, disolved the Empire.

In 1870 the "second" German Empire was founded. It was based on the new nationalistic philosophy that had taken hold of Europe for a century then.
The new German Emperors saw themselves in the tradition of the old "Holy Roman" Emperors, but the new ideas of "nation" did not allow the old concepts of "Emperor as head of Christianity" any more.

After the fall of morachy in 1918, the new state was still called "German Empire" - though it was a republic. Hitler used the approach of a more autocratic system to advocate his state as the new and real successor to the old Empire, in contrast to the Republic of Weimar. He proclaimed the new Nazi-Germany as the "Third Reich" and claimed that it would last at least a thousand years.

 

[wildthing]

Tell me a bit about Barbarossa (the original).

(1152-1190) Fredrick I Barbarossa ("Red Bread") duke Swabia. His Mission was to reconstruction of the Holy Roman Empire. Fredrick Barbarossa understood that the imperial structure of Henry III was beyond repair. Fredrick strove to harness regional forces to his imperial wagon. To that end, he pursued a policy of limited feudalization. First, he deliberately encouraged his great territorial princes to expand their power at the expense of lesser land owners: by backing the greater nobility against lesser ones, he sought to limit the decentralization of power within his Empire. Second, he force these greater princes to recognize his own overlordship; in other words, at the same time as he supported their regional power, he sought to secure his imperial authority over them. This policy would not work over the long run.

Fredrick also recognized that effective lordship over the great princes of the German states required two assets: educated bureaucrats and money. To improve his bureaucary, he supportedd education. to increase his revenues, he began extending territories under his direct authority, so that he could boast an extensive royal demesne to compete with the sizable territories of his chiek vassals. Fredrick accordingly enlarged his Swabian holdings by bringing many new monasteries and towns under imperial jurisdiction.

 

[Tini]

Is there a fake one?

Not to be confused with Operation Barbarossa - Hitler's advance on Moscow

 

[kurabrhm]

What's the historical link between Germany and South Africa?
If there is a connection, as I believe there is, what is the current German government doing to combat aids in S Africa?

 

[Freodin]

Not to be confused with Operation Barbarossa - Hitler's advance on Moscow

Ah, that one! Well, in fact this operation was named after Friedrich. The is an old legend that Barbarossa sits on a throne inside of a mountain, waiting to come out and save his people from grave danger. Hitler liked these mythological references.

But I had not even thought of this operation. I briefly considered the Tunesian pirate Barbarossa (well, he had a red beard also), but rejected the notion, as this is not german history.

See, that is the problem when you focus on a certain era of time. My main topic of interest is the medival era, and so the name "Adolf" does not bring Hitler to my mind, but Adolf of Nassau, a german king of the 14th century.

 

[oldrooster]

I am a big fan of the Weimar era, especially expressionist art.

 

[Freodin]

What's the historical link between Germany and South Africa?

There is no direct connection between Germany and South Africa.
South Africa was originally a dutch colony, and by the time it was established, the Dutch were no longer part of the German Empire.

Germany owned the neigboring colony of German-South-West-Africa; what is now Namibia.

And the closest "link" that I can think of was the (in)famous "Krüger-depeche" - a telegram send by Emperor Willhelm II to Ohm Krüger, leader of the Dutch settler in the Boor war, congratulating him after a victory of the British. The British did not like Willhelm much for that.

If there is a connection, as I believe there is, what is the current German government doing to combat aids in S Africa?

A lot of foreign aid Germany sends to Africa is focused on the ex-German colonies. I don´t know if there are special programs against AIDS though.