For most of its history, Germany was not a unified state but a loose association of territorial states that together made up the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”. It was a long time until the founding of the German Reich in 1871.

The term “deutsch” first surfaced in the 8th century. It referred to the language spoken in the eastern part of the Franconian realm, and meant “as the people speak” – as opposed to Latin, the language of scholars. After Charlemagne’s death in 814 the Franconian realm disintegrated, primarily along the linguistic divide between early Medieval French and Old High German. A feeling of belonging together emerged only gradually among the inhabitants of the eastern areas. “Germany” ought to be where “German” was spoken. Whereas the western border was established at an early date, settlement of the East did not come to a halt until the 14th century. The resulting contact between and intermingling of the German and Slavonic populations persisted until World War II.

The zero hour for post-war Germany rang out with the capitulation of the country on May 8-9, 1945. The members of the last government of the German Reich, headed by Admiral of the Fleet Dönitz were arrested and together with other National Socialist leaders brought before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and tried for crimes against peace and humanity. The four victorious powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France assumed supreme authority and divided up the capital city into four sectors and the territory of the Reich into four occupation zones. The Eastern territories were placed under Polish or Russian administration.

At the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945 the four victorious powers were in agreement on the questions of denazification, demilitarization, economic decentralization and re-education of the German people along democratic lines. Admittedly not all those involved agreed on what these concepts actually entailed. In Potsdam the Western powers gave their consent to the expulsion of Germans from the German eastern territories, from Hungary and from Czechoslovakia. The West had insisted that the transfer be carried out in a “humane” fashion, but this demand was not observed and in the following years some 12 million Germans were brutally expelled by the new rulers.

A minimum consensus was at least reached in the form of an agreement to treat Germany as an economic entity and in the medium term to establish centralized administrations for Germany as a whole. This resolution had no effect as the different developments in the zones occupied by the Soviet Union and the Western Allies respectively, as well as the handling of the reparations issue, which was of particular importance for the Soviet Union, excluded any uniform arrangement for Germany from the very beginning.

Culture


As a result of the country’s federal structure, culture in Germany is a basic strand of the independent status of individual states; the Basic Law accords the federal government only severely limited powers. The fact that individual states are responsible for their own cultural affairs has led to the emergence of large and small cultural centers of differing standing. Germany has never had a clear cultural capital. Diverse cultural scenes have sprung up even in small towns and districts.

The fact that various cultural institutions and activities in Germany are spread throughout the regions bears witness to this variety. Deutsche Bibliothek, a federal institution, has branches in Frankfurt/Main, Leipzig and Berlin. The Federal Records Office, headquartered in Koblenz, has offices in Berlin, Potsdam, Freiburg and Bayreuth, among others. Hamburg is the city with the greatest concentration of media companies. Cologne, Düsseldorf and Kassel are three of the centers for the Modern fine arts. Berlin has the most theaters. The most important museums are in Berlin, Dresden, Hildesheim, Frankfurt/Main, Cologne, Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgart. The two most important literature archives are located in Marbach and Weimar.

Most cultural establishments in the Federal Republic are maintained by the states, cities and local authorities. With a few exceptions, legislation pertaining to cultural affairs is the responsibility of individual states.

For this reason there has never been a Ministry of Culture at national level. The federal government does, however, have a female official entrusted with cultural and media affairs, who serves the Chancellor at ministerial level. She coordinates the federal government’s cultural activities, which had previously been distributed throughout various ministries and sees herself as a contact person and instigator with regard to the federal government’s cultural policy as well as a representative for German culture on the international and in particular the European stage.

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Literature


German literature in the aftermath of World War II started from a new beginning, with many authors attempting to find a way of describing the shocking, nihilistic experience of war and devastation – often taking their cue from foreign models or existentialist and traditional Christian trains of thought. Wolfgang Borchert’s drama “The Outsider” (1947), short stories by Heinrich Böll (“The Train was on Time”, 1949) and Arno Schmidt (“Leviathan”, 1949), poetry by Paul Celan (“Poppy and Memory”, 1952), Günter Eich and Peter Huchel are examples of the trend of not depicting political matters directly and realistically, but reflecting on German guilt and the German defeat through religious images and symbols for ways of looking at the world. In doing so, the authors take up the tradition of literary Modernism, which had been condemned during the Third Reich.

In the literature of the 1950s and 1960s, a current emerged whereby the manner involved in coming to terms with recent history itself became a literary topic. In many of the works that appeared in West Germany at the time, criticism of the post-War “economic miracle” is combined with efforts to work through the National Socialist past. The focus on quickly establishing new affluence was often interpreted as a method of escaping responsibility for what had happened during the Third Reich. The plays and prose of the Swiss writers Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch illustrate this. The most important works by German authors were by Wolfgang Koeppen (“The Greenhouse”, 1953), Heinrich Böll (“And Never Said a Word”, 1953, “The Bread of Those Early Years”, 1955, “Billards at Half-Past Nine”, 1959), Siegfried Lenz (“The German Lesson”, 1968) and Günter Grass (“The Tin Drum”, 1959, “Cat and Mouse”, 1961, “Dog Years”, 1963).

The “Gruppe 47” played a pivotal role. Instigated by Hans Werner Richter in 1947, this was an informal association of German-language writers, whose annual meetings until 1967 were a literary event, and increasingly a political highlight. Many of its members, who included many well-known authors of the day, saw themselves as the champions of moral values. Their most famous representatives, Heinrich Böll and Günther Grass, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972 and 1999 respectively.

In addition to these authors there was a whole host of others interested less in interpreting the realities of society as depicting it without emotion: Jürgen Becker, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Alexander Kluge and Dieter Wellershoff. Concrete poetry stood at loggerheads with all these currents (Max Bense, Eugen Gomringer, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Franz Mon), attempting to avoid any substantive content behind the words they used.

In the mid-1960s, the Federal Republic of Germany as well as every other western country, started to undergo a fundamental change. The student uprisings of 1968 instigated a clearly radicalized form of criticizing the “silence of our fathers” and thus the crimes perpetrated by the National Socialists. Glorifying aesthetic trends in literature were interpreted as camouflaging the social and economic reasons for an economic structure that was deemed unjust. Many authors strove to be active socially and politically – while at the same time refusing to be cornered politically. The fact that several literary figures spoke out against the war in Vietnam and in favor of the new Ostpolitik was symptomatic of this. The search for a new role and new forms for literature was also characteristic. Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s theory of the “death of literature” and Peter Weiss’ “aesthetics of resistance” were both radical expressions of this new train of thought.

Documentary theater also played a role in this political literature (Rolf Hochhuth: “The Representative”, 1963; Heinar Kipphardt: “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, 1964), which in terms of both content and intention was related to partisan reporting (Günter Wallraff: “Ihr da oben – wir da unten”, 1973) and literature featuring the world of work.

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In addition to these trends there were also individuals who nevertheless made their mark as important authors of their day: Arno Schmidt and the Austrian Thomas Bernhard are outstanding examples. The oeuvres of these two writers represents a serious and at times deeply ironic portrayal of the existence of the artist in a world full of indifference and unimaginativeness. Moreover, Peter Handke, a highly acclaimed Austrian writer at the end of the 1960s, was one of the most influential writers during the first ten years of his creative output.

If the 1960s were full of beginnings, stimuli and change, the years that followed seem to have been characterized by an exhaustion of artistic devices and potential. The novels and short stories written by those successful authors of the first decades after the war were conspicuous by their lack of originality and cutting-edge characteristic of their ideas, with very little literary output from the generation of 1968, which preferred other genres of artistic expression.

Not dissimilar to 1945, the years 1989-1990 – the end of communism, the GDR and the Soviet Union (1991) – marked a profound turning point not just in political history but also in culture. This applied in particular to those authors living in the GDR who supported a state which, despite all its shortcomings, they considered to be the better of the two states on German soil. From the very beginning, once it had been initiated into the Soviet literary idea of “socialist realism”, literature in the GDR had developed in a completely different direction from that in the West.

Those that refused to submit to this pressure left the country: Uwe Johnson, Günter Kunert, Reiner Kunze, Sarah Kirsch, Jurek Becker as well as Wolfgang Hilbig escaped the grasp of the state’s intervention in the domain of literature.

As such, in the GDR of the 1950s and 1960s there emerged a form of literature that was widely conformist, advocating the idea of reconstruction and historical optimism without formal innovations and any discussion of 20th century avant-garde theories. Only the work of Christa Wolf, Irmtraud Morgner and Heiner Müller towered above this intellectual mediocrity and ideological uniformity. Even in the last throes of the GDR, the output of literary critics such as Christoph Hein, Volker Braun, Ulrich Plenzdorf, Peter Hacks, Stephan Hermlin and Stefan Heym remained infrequent and restrained.

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Painters


For most young artists Pablo Picasso presented a real challenge with his multi-faceted work. Encountering Surrealism (Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí) and American Abstract Expressionism, in particular the works of Jackson Pollock, was very important. Artists such as Roberto Sebastian Matta, Jean Dubuffet, Georges Mathieu, Jean Fautrier and Wols, however, also stimulated trends in the early art scene in the Federal Republic.

Various groups played a part in the development of this scene. These included: the “Ecole de Paris”, which was established around 1940; “COBRA” (founded in 1948); “junger westen” (1948); “Zen 49” (1949); and “Quadriga” (1953).

Parallel to the Tachiste movement in France, under the influence of surrealism, the “Ecole de Paris” and American “Abstraction”, a style of art emerged in Germany directly after the Second World War which, far removed from figurative painting or even abstraction, preferred as its general characteristic an abstract, gesticular, semi-automatic way of painting, which is never completely out of control and follows the principal of planned coincidence. The rich variety of the German art informel is manifest in the works of artists who have long since become internationally known: Karl Otto Götz, Bernard Schultze, Fred Thieler, Gerhard Hoehme, Karl Friedrich Dahmen, Emil Schumacher, Peter Brüning, K. R. H. Sonderborg.

At the beginning of the 1950s, almost all the artists in these informal groups sought liberation from the dogmas of figurative panel painting. Thus, different currents emerged to enrich the artistic spectrum in post- War Germany. These include color field painting, i.e., painting via the concrete, dispassionate medium of color, as Georg Karl Pfahler, Günter Fruhtrunk and Lothar Quinte focus on in their work. It also includes the Action art of the “doer” HA Schult and movements such as the happening initiated by Wolf Vostell and the Fluxus activities, which he profoundly influenced.

Joseph Beuys set completely new standards, devising a new, unusual interpretation of art, opening up art to new dimensions, new fields of signification. His often misunderstood formulae, “art is life, life is art” and “every person is an artist”, his “events” with fat and felt, his ideas, rooted in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, the rigorous way in which he managed to win over an ever increasing number of students at the Düsseldorf Academy: These are just some of the striking features in the life and work of Joseph Beuys. His “extended interpretation” of art provided him with an instrument which allowed him to champion “social sculpture” as the perfection of his artistic philosophy.

The Zero group also electrified the public early on with its type of happenings. Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker represent a type of artist, which, following the Nazi Holocaust, was no longer interested in following ideologies but rather in designing concrete pictures.

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Architecture


German architecture set trends in the first 30 years of the 20th century. The strongest influences came from Weimar and Dessau, where the Bauhaus school was founded in the 1920s, and the style that bears its name evolved. Under the leadership of Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the style spread to the far corners of the earth. Today, masterpieces of its synthesis of architecture, technology and functionality can be found all over the world.

Germany’s contemporary architecture suffered for some time from the country’s difficult situation after 1945. Destroyed cities had to be rebuilt quickly. Millions of people needed a roof over their heads. Architectural quality often took a back seat to a primarily economicallyoriented functionalism in building and construction, which paid little heed to shaping a livable residential and working environment, the consequences of which are still visible in many places today.

In the western part of divided Germany, bitter complaints were increasingly heard as early as the 1960s about the monotonous architecture of satellite towns, the faceless industrial and business districts on the peripheries of towns as well as the ill-considered construction marring the inner cities. There was talk of what Alexander Mitscherlich termed the “inhospitable nature” of the inner cities before a town-planning concept focusing on preservation of a city’s architecture and character was accorded political and social priority in the mid-1970s.

Architectural and town-planning sins of at least equal magnitude were also committed at this time in the former GDR. Valuable old buildings, which were still standing, most of them in the inner cities, were left to dilapidate or were demolished. The scarce resources earmarked for residential construction were channeled into massive uniform edge-of-town housing estates. With few exceptions, architects had too few opportunities to implement a style of architecture in keeping with the times.

Today, Germany boasts an increasing number of examples of modern experimental architecture which is nevertheless in tune with human needs. Many a superb building still owes its origination to the style and philosophy of Bauhaus. More recent trends in architecture have, however, also resulted in the construction of remarkable buildings, such as high-tech buildings in which important functional elements such as elevators, escalators, and supply lines have been moved to the outside of the structure, where (often painted in different colors) they concurrently serve as decoration.

Today, other forms of ornamentation such as capitals, cornices, and ornaments in the Art Deco style are being used in a greater variety of ways as eye-catchers in the sense of architecture as art, breaking away from the postulate of architecture as mere fulfillment of function. Germany’s top echelon of architects includes:
• Gottfried Böhm, who in 1986 became the first German to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
• Günter Behnisch, who designed not only the buildings and grounds for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich but also the new plenary chamber of the German Bundestag in Bonn in 1993.
• Frei Otto, who made a name for himself in the fields of flexible suspended roof structures and ecologically-oriented buildings.
• Oswald Mathias Ungers, whose buildings exhibit a stringent geometric design.
• Josef Paul Kleihues and Hardt-Waltherr Hämer, who as planning directors of the International Building Exhibition in Berlin have profoundly influenced both debates on new architecture and the treatment of residential accommodation in old buildings.
• Volker Staab, who set important trends in museum construction with Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne and the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt.
• Axel Schultes, who won the 1993 Berlin “Internationaler städtebaulicher Ideenwettbewerb Spreebogen“ and (together with Charlotte Frank) masterminded the new Federal Chancellery Building.

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Berlin

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's only remaining city gate, is the true symbol of the city. Because it was situated in the no man's land just behind the »wall, it also became symbolic of the division of the city. After the Fall of the Wall, the Gate was reopened on December 22, 1989.
The sandstone construction, built from 1788–91 to plans by C.G. Langhans, has 12 Doric columns and is based on the propylaeum of the Acropolis in Athens. On both sides, six Doric columns support the 11 meter-deep transverse beam, dividing the gate into five passageways. In 1794 the building was crowned with the quadriga and goddess of victory created by Schadow, which face eastwards towards the city center. The Brandenburg Gate was surrounded by further buildings which were destroyed in the war.
After the decision of Berlin' s senate on October, 22 The Brandenburg Gate remains closed for cars, cabs and busses. Berliners and their guests can enjoy now the renewed beauty of the Pariser Platz. Pariser Platz

As part of the reconstruction of Pariser Platz, new buildings have been added which are based on their historic forebears. Pariser Platz forms the link between the Brandenburg Gate and the magnificent »Unter den Linden boulevard. It was originally a parade ground before barracks were built at the end of Unter den Linden during the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm I. Noble villas, embassies and the luxurious Hotel Adlon arose around the square. The square was destroyed in the Second World War. Since the Fall of the Wall, new buildings by renowned international architects have been and are being built. The Liebermann House and the Sommer House, newly constructed to the left and right of the Brandenburg Gate, were conceived as a pair, and their design is based on the previous buildings created by Stüler. The Dresdner Bank building follows the architectural conventions of Pariser Platz closely, without degenerating into historicism.

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The Reichstag is the seat of the German Bundestag or federal government and, with its new dome, one of the Berlin's biggest crowd-draws in Berlin. Its colorful past reflects the turbulence of German history since the 19th century.
The Reichstag was constructed from 1884–94 by Paul Wallot, since a representative building was needed to house the parliament of the newly-founded German state. The inscription "Dem Deutschen Volke" ("To the German people") was only added in 1916 during the First World War, because Wilhelm II. had previously been against it. On 9 November 1918, the politician Philipp Scheidemann announced the establishment of the Republic from one of its windows. Part of the Reichstag was destroyed in a fire on 27 November 1933: the exact cause has never been identified, but the fire was used by the Nazis to justify their persecution of political opponents. After the war, the devastated building was rebuilt in a simplified form from 1961–71 to plans by Paul Baumgarten, but it was not used for parliamentary functions. The dome, which had been blown up in 1945, was not rebuilt. Inside the edifice bordering the »Berlin wall there was an exhibition, "Questions on German History", which is now displayed in the »Deutscher Dom. After reunification, the German Federal Government decided to use the building as a parliament once again. From 1994–99 the Reichstag was reconstructed and extended by the Architect Sir Norman Forster, taking into consideration both the immense historical implications and its function as a modern working parliament, and adding an accessible dome. Before the renovation work began in 1994, the building became the stage for one of the most spectacular art events in Europe: it was wrapped by Christo and Jeanne Claude. The glass dome, which was at first the subject of great controversy, has now become one of the newest landmarks in the city. Since 1999 the Reichstag building has once again been the seat of the German Bundestag.

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The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is the central place for remembrance and a place of warning. Situated in Berlins city centre, the memorial was built near the Reichstag and the Brandenburger Tor. The decision to build this Memorial was taken by the German parliament on June, 25 1999, when it passed a resolution to realise a design by Peter Eisenman, the internationally renowned New York architect. Eisenmans design envisages a Field of Stelae, 2,711 concrete blocks of different heights, structured in a grid pattern and covering nearly 19,000 m2 of gently sloping ground. Since it is entirely open to all sides, the Memorial can be entered anywhere but as visitors move through it, the blocks seem to form different wave-like patterns. Peter Eisenman re-worked this extraordinary design a number of times, creating a radical departure from the standard notion of a static memorial. The memorial has a complementary underground Information Centre, similarly designed by Eisenman in an equally impressive style, providing around 800 sq. meters of exhibition space giving background information on the victims and detailing other historical memorial sites.

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Berlin's magnificent boulevard, the centrepiece of the Old Berlin, leads from Pariser Platz at the »Brandenburg Gate to the Schlossbrücke bridge. Unter den Linden was originally a bridle path: from 1573, it led from Berlin Palace to Lietzow, later Charlottenburg, and then on to Spandau. From 1701, the Linden became more and more built up, mirroring the rising splendor of the monarchy and the new architectural style.
As time went by, the »Zeughaus (Arsenal) and the Friedrichstadt appeared; under Frederick the Great, they were joined by the Kronprinzenpalais, the Prinzessinnenpalais, the »Opera House and the Palace for Prince Heinrich, now the Humboldt University. The »Forum Fridericianum, begun at the end of the 18th century, was to be the intellectual and artistic centre of the monarchy, with the »Staatsoper, the Academy Library, »St. Hedwig's Cathedral and, on the opposite site, the Palace of Prince Heinrich.
Schinkel's great architectural achievement was the unification of the various buildings and styles into a single aesthetic concept: this led to the creation of the »Neue Wache (New Guardhouse), the Schlossbrücke bridge and the redesigned Lustgarten; in this way, Unter den Linden became a coherent ensemble. At the end of the 19th century, the »Berliner Dom was constructed in the eclectic Wilhelmine style.
During the Second World War, Hitler ordered the linden trees to be chopped down so that the road could be widened and integrated into the east-west axes; by the end of the war the avenue was a wasteland of ruins. Those buildings which still stood were gradually reconstructed, but the real work of rebuilding, which included the demolition of the Stadtschloss (Berlin Palace), only began in earnest in 1958. Sleek, 1960s buildings with uniform façades began to appear. The place of the former Berlin Palace was taken by the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic) which had to be closed in the nineties due to its intoxication with asbestos. Since the Fall of the Wall, many buildings have been restored and reconstructed. The Lustgarten, previously used as parade grounds, has been redesigned as a garden in accordance with Lenné's plans.

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Friedrichstraße is the most legendary street in the whole city and combines the tradition of the "Golden Twenties" with the architecture of the New Berlin. In the Twenties, the 3.5 km long street was the location for pleasure palaces, cafés, theatres and variety theatres such as the famous "Wintergarten".
After the division of the city, the Wall also cut through Friedrichstraße, where the famous »Checkpoint Charlie was located at the border of the districts of Kreuzberg and Mitte and thus at the border of East and West Berlin. The train station at Friedrichstraße, which has recently undergone complete renovation, remains rather more tragically in the minds of many East and West Berliners as the border crossing point between the two Germanys. The former customs hall, known as the "Tränenpalast" or "Palace of Tears", now hosts arts and entertainment events. Further north, the Friedrichstadtpalast offers revue theatre of international standing.
On the southern half of Friedrichstraße there are countless new buildings, including the Friedrichstadtpassagen, with boutiques, offices and restaurants featuring the latest in architectural design. Shopping and window-shopping in the French fashion is the attraction of the Galeries Lafayette, located in the Quartier 207: on offer are a range of French specialties, particularly in the delicatessen. The impressive design created by the architect Jean Nouvel boasts a transparent glass façade and an atrium which tapers towards the bottom. The connecting Quartier 206, which is home to the boutiques of countless top designers, boasts an extravagant Art Déco style. Not only visitors but also the employees from the new, chic offices, agencies and media centers all enjoy the urban spirit and New York flair of the new Friedrichstraße.

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