Impressions of Germany

For many centuries Germany was carved up in a multitude of autonomous States with ever changing borders. The unity created by Charlemagne as he conquered Saxony and Bavaria from his capital in Aachen, did not outlive him. Immediately after his death in 814, the Carolingian Empire started falling apart and the succeeding Holy Roman Empire in Germany was run by elected emperors who required the blessing of the Pope for their coronation and above all, who needed to buy the support of local and regional Lords, Counts, Viscounts and Dukes to maintain themselves in 'power', by granting them ever growing privileges of autonomy. Regional dynasties thus developed: the Wittelbach dynasty in Bavaria, the Hohenzollern in Brandenburg are examples. On top of all this, religious differences cut through medieval Germany, when Martin Luther entered into an open confrontation with the Pope in 1521. Soon, Northern Germany adopted Luther's 'Protestantism', while the South largely remained Catholic. A religious war of thirty years followed, until 1648. The real change in Germany actually came with a Frenchman, … Napoleon Bonaparte. At the end of wars, he annexed the Alsace and eliminated plenty of small German States, creating a stronger Prussia and the Kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg. Over and out with the 'Holy Roman Empire'. Bismarck did the rest in the 1860s, bringing all Germany under one Prussian roof. Prussian controlled Germany was united and strong. However, the defeat in the first World War weakened the country immensely, and the second World War brought Germany even under its ethical and moral freezing point with Hitler's Nazi regime. Germany was split up after the war in a capitalist West, run from Bonn, and a communist East, run from East Berlin. It took until 1990 for the country to be reunited: Soviet supported East Germany was dissolved, just before the Soviet Union went down the drain itself, and Berlin became the capital again of this large and immensely diverse country. Diverse for its geography, for its various cultural, religious and social identities, for the aspect of its cities and nature, from the North and Baltic Seas to the Alps; a diversity we will humbly and gradually try to discover in the pages which follow.