10 Reasons why Germany has the best history

The Nazis are overrated — German history is much more interesting than that.

A few weeks ago I had to make a short notice trip to Berlin. Not because I’m a regular international jet-setter, of the sort who will refer to airports by three-letter IATA codes, but because I had to go to a funeral. Still, unhappy circumstances aside the trip also reminded me of one thing: that Germany is absolutely fascinating. And its history is littered with stunningly important moments. To explain why — here’s a modern ‘listicle’ of Germany’s top ten most interesting historical things. And I haven’t even mentioned the, umm, unpleasantness that you’re all thinking of.

Holy Roman Empire (962-1806)

Whilst many of the other countries have long had roughly the same borders, until surprisingly recently Germany was just a mish-mash of tiny states. Most of them were ostensibly part of the Holy Roman Empire, which is well known for having perhaps the least descriptive name in history until the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea came along a millenium later.

What’s cool about the HRE is that whilst England, France and Spain had their monarchies, which passed down power through familial lines, the HRE was an elective monarchy. Whenever the Emperor died, all of the mess of little Germanic states would send along a prince, and they’d all vote on which one gets to be Emperor. Then to actually be able to used the title ‘Emperor’, they’d have to get the blessing of the Pope. And somehow, this worked. I mean, the constituent parts still fought both with words and weapons — but for some reason this weird setup persisted.

How did this crazy system come about? It’s, umm, complicated.

Concordat of Worms (1122)

Not only is Worms a real place, but it has been home to two massively important historical moments. Until 1122, the dividing line between political and religious authority was incredibly blurry — the Vatican wasn’t just a gerontocratic theocracy in which an old guy would be wheeled out to wave at people, but a powerful political player. The Catholic church owned lots of land — and was a major player in legitimating the actions of political players (see above). The church would meddle in the affairs of different states — and different states would meddle back, trying to influence church appointments and the like.

The Concordat of Worms attempted to rein this in. To cut a long story short (and probably get it a bit wrong) — the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope basically agreed that the Catholic church are in charge of spiritual stuff, and the Emperor gets to deal with temporal (ie: non-made up stuff) side of things. Which is arguably where we first saw signs of the idea of sovereignty. Which is very important both in terms of how the modern international system developed, and in terms of a buzzwords that Euroskeptics can tediously repeat like it’s an argument in itself.

Gutenberg (1395-1468)

It’s Germany we have to thank for the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg, who was basically the Tim Berners-Lee of his day came up with and popularised printing — freeing learning and literacy from the elites and putting it into the hands of… the not quite as elite. Books were still expensive, but getting a print was still cheaper than paying a monk to copy it all out, and then spend ages doodling around the edges of every page.

Not only was this the mechanism for knowledge to be disseminate and the modern world, but it also inadvertently eventually provided a useful mechanism to break the Catholic Church’s monopoly on religion by letting people actually read what all of the fuss was about. (Yes, there were other factors at play too).

The Reformation (1517- Umm… let’s say 1648)

Astonishingly, the Catholic Church used to think it could get away with selling almost literal get-out-of-jail-free cards. Apparently you could buy forgiveness from God for your sins (“indulgences”), and not have to worry about all of that wrath from the time you coveted an Ox, or whatever. In a move that would have made Psychic Sally proud, the Pope sold these magic words for a hefty profit.

Martin Luther though had some other ideas — and called the Pope on his bullshit, kicking off the Protestant Reformation. As with everything — this is best summarised in this YouTube rap video: I’ve Got 95 Theses But A Pope Ain’t One.

Diet of Worms (1521)

Worms was the site of another major religious smackdown. After Martin Luther had kicked off the reformation, the Emperor was bricking it because it challenged authority and risked instability and all that — but rather than simply kill him, they invited him to come and debate, promising safe passage. Which is pretty honourable.

I don’t know enough about this period of history to know if this particular event did anything major in itself, other than being a major exciting moment… but… it didn’t seem to end well.

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

The rise of Protestantism in Germany (which, remember, is not a nation state but a… state of mind at this point) led to a massive shitstorm in the form of the Thirty Years War. Which was apparently one of the most destructive wars in history until WWII (which Germany also had a hand in…).

The Catholics and the Protestants fought it out for ages (30 years to be precise), and dragged in pretty much every other power in Europe in the process (“How long will British troops be stuck in Dusseldorf?”, the newspaper columnists of the time presumably complained).

Whilst bloody and destructive, the war was actually a major turning point. It ended in two treaties, collectively known as the Peace of Westphalia, which didn’t just sort out who gets what — because every major player was involved, it was able to set the rules of how states should act. And this set the stage for how we understand the international system today.

Perhaps most importantly it established the idea of discrete territories forming states — with definite borders where the influence of one state ended and another began. It established the principles of non-intervention in another states’ affairs. And it codified the concept of sovereignty once and for all. And this is the world we still live in today.

It was pretty exciting for secularists too — the final settlement allowed German states to choose which religion is their official state religion, and also allowed people in the states to choose their religion… as long as it was either Catholicism, Lutheranism or Calvinism. Hey — it’s a good start!

Kant (1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant lived in Koenigsberg, and was hugely important in philosophy. I like him because he wrote the Perpetual Peace, a surprisingly readable essay that basically advocated for European Union about 300 years too early. He called for a confederation of European states to wipe-out warfare, and also spoke about how Republics make for awesome governments because of their (for the time) relatively accountable governments. If everyone was a republic, there wouldn’t be war, Kant thought (I look forward to being corrected in the comments, historians).

The other fun thing about Kant is that Koenigsberg is no longer part of Germany — bizarrely, it is now a part of Russia. After WWII when Germany had its wings clipped, the Soviet Union claimed it for themselves on the grounds that finders-keepers. And this weird anomoly has persisted meaning that Kalingrad, as it’s now known, is surrounded by lovely EU countries — and the place where Kant, one of the architects of modern liberalism lived… is now controlled by Putin. Yeah.

German Empire (1871)

So why did Germany unify from being just a mash of principalities and tiny states? There had been a historical trend towards it coming together — with the number of states reducing over the centuries, but what really got things moving was the dastardly French. Bismarck, who brought Germany together openly said he thought a war with France would do the trick, and as luck would have it, in 1870 a war kicked off and Germany — led by Prussia (which was most of Northern Germany) did really astonishingly well, even taking Paris.

To really show off the Germans boasted about their win with one of the best dick-moves in history — they declared the creation of the German Empire not in Germany… but in conquered France. In the Palace of Versaille. In the Hall of Mirrors. That wasn’t going to come back to bite them, right?

East Germany (1945-1990)

So WWI happened, WWII happened, blah blah blah. We know that. But what I find fascinating is that East Germany existed. I was three when Germany reunified, so it’s mystifying to think that the communist bloc not only existed in my lifetime, but that it wasn’t just some crazy themepark.

After all — Germany is a major European power. It’s rich — it’s not one of those miscellaneous Eastern European countries… it’s not History’s Punching Bag, or “Poland”, to give it’s official name… Germany has been all important and powerful (see above). Yet there it was chopped in half.

It’s very weird to think that the place I could fly to in 90 minutes on a plane last week would have been nearly impossible to visit 25 years ago. And that not so long ago Communism wasn’t this weird eccentric ideology that tedious students like, but was a proper thing — Hammer, Sickle et al. And it’s even weirder to think that they managed to reunify the country so quickly.

Considering how long it takes for anything to get done in politics, it’s astonishing having not been conscious at the time, to see that in two years Germany went from widely divided society to unification. How did they get the Coke bottles and Nike trainers over there so quickly?

When I was in Berlin a few years ago I read the unification treaty in one of the museums — it was a surprisingly emotive document.

Divided Berlin (1945-1990)

Perhaps even more weird than East Germany as a whole is Berlin — what an astonishing curiosity. Not only was the city divided, but somehow East and West came up with an agreement to make it actually work. Take public transport, as a particularly nerdy example.

The Metro was chopped in two by the wall — so both sides operated trains on their respective bits. Which isn’t as simple as you might think. Some of the Western trains went on tracks that were technically in East Berlin. The trains continued even after the wall went up, but the stations on the other side were closed and instead all commuters could see were East German border guards in pillboxes. In a nerdily fascinating piece of trivia, as far as I can tell from maps both sides continued to use the same distinctive logos for U-Bahn and S-Bahn too.

The main railway station, at Friedrichstrasse continued to be the major hub for national and international trains for both East and West. But rather than let travellers from both sides mingle, they divided the station in two — one side for East, one for West. It became a major border crossing point. Despite being located in East Berlin, Western passengers were able to get off of their train from Bonn or Cologne, and transfer to the Western U-Bahn without technically entering the East. Read the Wikipedia page for how mad it must have been.

Even weirder is the regional rail — apparently the commuter rail in West Berlin was technically owned and operated by East Germany (which led to some westerners boycotting it).

And how did they make it work? Apparently West paid East 20 million Marks each year to operate these services.

Okay — so maybe I’m a transport nerd.

It’s very strange to think about the divided city. Take Potsdammerplatz now — which back in the old days was a major public square, but during the Cold War became a no-mans land. It’s like someone building a wall across Trafalgar Square. And in recent years it has been rebuilt into what appears to be the Berlin equivalent of Leicester Square. Walking around there last week, it was tricky to figure out which bits were east and which were west. So it’s possible to completely cut off a city and then reunite it. Crazy.

So that’s it

Does any other country have a more interesting history? I don’t think so. So look past Hitler — he was just a dick. Germany is much more interesting than that.