Germany Jahrgangsstufe 12 History
Chapters: 2
1. Path to participation, 1790s to Weimar
Rise of civil society · Modernisation in Imperial and Weimar Germany · Jewish life: emancipation and exclusion
- The Weimar Republic: Germany's First Democracy – After the First World War the German Emperor left and Germany became a republic (1918-19) with a democratic constitution and votes for women. The republic carried the burdens of the Treaty of Versailles, survived crisis and hyperinflation to 1923, had stable years from 1924, and was broken by the Great Depression, which helped the Nazis win power in 1933.
- Jewish Emancipation in Europe: From Limits to Equal Rights – Emancipation means gaining equal civil rights. From the 1780s to 1919 Jews in Europe moved, state by state, from many legal limits towards equal citizenship, helped by Enlightenment ideas and the Haskala. Yet equality in law did not end prejudice, and modern antisemitism grew from the 1870s.
2. Germany between democracy and dictatorship
Fall of Weimar, Nazi dictatorship, Holocaust · Two German states: FRG and GDR · Reunified Germany 1990 to 2013 · Remembering German democratic history
- The Holocaust – The Holocaust (in Hebrew, the Shoah) was the planned, state-organised persecution and murder of about six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and helpers between 1933 and 1945. It grew out of old antisemitism and Nazi racist ideology. It went step by step: exclusion and laws (1933–38), ghettos and mass shootings (1939–41), and death camps (1942–45). Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Polish and Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war and others were also persecuted and murdered. Jews resisted in many ways, and some people risked their lives as rescuers, while many others looked away. After the war came trials, the 1948 Genocide Convention and remembrance, so that such a crime is never repeated.
- The Cold War (1945–1991) – The Cold War was a long contest (1945–1991) between two superpowers: the USA with its Western allies (capitalism, multi-party elections) and the USSR with its Eastern allies (communism, one-party rule). They never fought each other directly. Instead they formed rival alliances (NATO, Warsaw Pact), raced to build nuclear weapons and reach space, backed opposite sides in proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan) and came close to nuclear war in Cuba in 1962. Many new nations, led by India and others, stayed non-aligned. Détente eased tension in the 1970s. Reforms in the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the break-up of the USSR (1991) ended it.
- History and Memory: How We Remember the Past – Memory is how people and groups remember the past; history is the careful study of the past using evidence. After an event, witnesses keep living memory for a few generations. Sources such as documents, photos, objects and interviews survive longer. Societies turn memory into memorials, museums, street names and remembrance days. Different groups may remember the same event differently, so historians compare sources to test memory, correct myths and give a fair account. Remembering past wrongs can support justice and reconciliation.