When we start talking about Germany we always remember about the first and second world war specially the second world war which has been the cause of a lot of distraction. Germany has a lot to talk about than that ,actually the second world war it was the idea of the mad man,hitler ,not the German people. Germany has a lot to offer than war, a rich artistic heritage: from the claustrophobic beauty of its cathedrals to some of the world's most influential philosophers, from the cream of classical composers to contemporary industrial-grunge music,from the genius of Goethe to the revolutionary theater of Brecht, Germany has it all. In this article we will see germany beyond the what is conceived in each of us about this country. Germany as a whole (east and west Germany )as a beautiful historical and cultural country. How the political condition of the two Germans before and after unification,how is the culture how the infrastructure.
let us start from the culture-Unsurprisingly for a country whose land has so often been at history's crux, the moods and preoccupations of Germany's people are reflected in a rich culture. The beautiful cathedrals the philosophers the composers all has contributed a lot for Germanyıs rich culture. Philosophers like Goethe who was also the finest artist Germany has produced, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a poet, dramatist,painter, scientist and philosopher. His greatest work, the drama Faust, is a masterful epic of all that went before him, as the archetypal human strives for meaning. The ghost of Goethe inhabits the soul of Germany.
Despite their penchant for continual improvement and modernization, upholding cultural traditions is dear to the German heart. Hunters still wear green, master chimney sweeps get around in pitch-black suits and top hats, Bavarian women don the Dirndl (skirt and blouse), while their menfolk find suitable occasions to wear the typical Bavarian leather shorts, a Loden (short jacket) and felt hat. In everyday life, Germans are fairly formal, although more so in the Protestant-dominated north than the beer swilling south.
From pagan harvest romps to black tie opera galas, Germans are keen to party. Winter festivals occur throughout Germany, with big cities such as Cologne, Munich and Mainz erupting into carnival commotion just before Ash Wednesday. Germany's rich musical heritage is showcased in a plethora of festivals. Some towns concentrate on a particular composer, such as the Thuringian Bach Festival in March or the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth each July, whereas others focus on a particular style. The jazz festivals in Frankfurt (March), Stuttgart (April) and Berlin (October) are lively and popular. Autumn is a great time for harvest-inspired mayhem, especially in the Rhineland, where the Rhine in Flames frolics feature barges laden with fireworks. Most towns in Bavaria have festivals devoted to beer and they're much nicer than Oktoberfest. Christmas celebrations are embraced wholeheartedly by German families, most extravagantly in Munich, Nuremberg, Essen and Heidelberg.
Besides it's culture Germany has a rich and interesting history let us see from the ancient history of that country when it was undevided and upto the division: The rich and complex history of what is now Germany is inseparable from that of Central and Western Europe from the 5th century onwards. It is often said that the Germanic tribes destroyed the Roman Empire, but the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Franks who settled in Western Europe after the deposition of the Emperor Romulus in AD476 were anxious to perpetuate, at least in some of its aspects, a system which they both admired and found administratively convenient. Indeed, it was a Frank, Charlemagne, who revived the Roman Empire in the West in AD800, thus being the first to unite what is now germany together with the area of France and northern Italy, albeit only for the 40 years of his own reign and that of his son, Louis the Pious. The division of Charlemagne's Empire was confirmed by the Treaty of Verdun (AD843), as a result of which much of what is now Germany passed to Louis' son, Louis the German. During the next 80 years, Germany fragmented into five large duchies (Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia, Lorranie and Swabia), whose dukes managed to establish a de facto hereditary tenure. The 10th century witnessed a growth in the power of central authority under the leadership of the House of Saxony, while in the 11th century and early 12th century, under the Salian dynasty, the power of the crown was in many ways at its height. In 1152, following a disputed succession and a civil war, the dynamic Frederick Barbarossa acceded to the throne: he is one of the most significant figures in German history. Frederick, his son Henry VI and his grandson Frederick II made prodigious attempts to revive the reality of royal power in Germany and Italy, but the task proved impossible and by the late 13th century the country was seething with civil war. This period saw the emergence for the first time of the House of Habsburg. Temporarily deposed by other dynasties during the next 150 years, Albert V of Habsburg re-established his clan's ascendancy in 1438. The Habsburgs were to rule the empire, with only a brief interruption, until 1806. By this time Germany had dissolved into a patchwork of over 300 states, some no more than a town or castle, and increasingly the Habsburg Emperors derived their power and influence from their extensive family lands.In 1519, Charles V became Emperor, uniting by his dynastic connections Spain, the Low Countries, Naples, Sicily, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire and all the Spanish possessions in the New World. Germany, in common with much of the rest of Europe, was riven by the Reformation at this time, despite Charles V's attempts to impose a religious solution by force.
The impossibility of holding together such a large empire was recognized by Charles himself, and on his abdication in 1556 the imperial office and the Habsburg lands passed to his brother Ferdinand I. Sporadic warfare against the Turks continued, but a more serious catastrophe was the complex Thirty Years War (1618-1648), during which many of Europe's disputes were fought out on German soil. One of the results of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was the emergence of the previously minor state of Brandenburg-Prussia as a major power; the territorial gains were built upon by a series of cunning and ruthless rulers and, by the early 18th century, the new kingdom was the scourge of other European states, the Habsburg Empire not least. Frederick the Great is the king most strongly associated with the growth of Prussian militarism. By the time the moribund Holy Roman Empire - not inaccurately described by a contemporary as being `neither holy, nor nor an empire' - was formally abolished by Napoleon in 1806 (by which time the Habsburgs had already assumed the title of Emperor of Austria), much of its northern and eastern parts had already been absorbed by Prussia. After 1815 the German Confederation was established with 39 states. German unification continued apace throughout the century, the most significant figure being Count (later Prince) von Bismarck, Chancellor under Emperor Wilhelm I. Various wars, both offensive and defensive, were fought with other European states, the most notable being the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), and an increasingly complex web of treaties and diplomacy (including the Dual and Triple Alliances of 1878 and1892) grew up, which for a time contained the equally increasingly ambitious policies of the major European states and their empires. It was a revolt in Serbia which finally shattered the illusion of European security, precipitating a complex chain of events which led to the First World War. After 1918 a democratic constitution was adopted, but political instability and severe economic problems assisted the rise of the National Socialists under Adolf Hitler during the 1930s. Hitler sought to reverse the perceived humiliation imposed by the 1919 Versailles Treaty (the political settlement at the end of the First World War) by initiating a major rearmament programme which no other European power seemed inclined to challenge. Hitler then set about creating the Third Reich, first by merger (Anschluss) with Austria, then annexation of the Czech Sudetenland, followed by the then Czechoslovakia itself. When Hitler threatened Poland, Britain and France then drew the line: from there, it was a short route to the Second World War.
That was more or less the history of germany upto the second world war which became the cause for the division of this great country. In the following paragraph we will see how the division came how germany was divided and became united again. After six years of global warfare, at an estimated cost of 60 million lives, the German army was defeated in 1945 by the Allied armies of the USA, the USSR, Britain and others. This produced the post-war division of Europe into Western and Soviet spheres of influence. Germany was divided into two parts: the eastern, Soviet-controlled portion became the German Democratic Republic; the western part emerged to become the Federal Republic of Germany. The city of Berlin, which lay within the GDR, was itself divided into Allied and Soviet-controlled zones. East Berlin became the capital of the GDR while the isolated West Berlin was attached to the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic was established in September 1949, under the supervision of the three Western allied powers - the USA, Britain and France. Federal politics adopted the familiar pattern of Social Democratic (SPD) and centre-right Christian Democrat (CDU) parties typical of most of Western Europe. The dominant political figure of the era was Konrad Adenauer,Chancellor between 1949 and 1963. Adenauer and his economics minister Ludwig Erhard were the principal architects of the country's phenomenal economic growth after 1945. A major foundation of this was the European Coal and Steel Community, under which the Federal Republic and France, together with several smaller neighbours, established a free trade area in these products. This was the basis of the European Economic Community, which was formally established by the 1957 Rome Treaty. The Christian Democrats remained in power until 1972, at which point the SPD took control of the Bundestag under the leadership of Willi Brandt. Brandt resigned in 1974 and was replaced by Helmut Schmidt. Brandt initiated the Ostpolitik under which peaceful cooperation became the centrepiece of relations with the GDR; it was conceived as an alternative to the sterility of the Cold War.
The Soviets had sponsored the creation of the GDR in October 1949 and granted formal independence to the country five years later. During the 1950s, the GDR embarked on a full-scale programme of socialist development complete with wholesale agricultural reform and breakneck industrial construction. Popular discontent with some of the policies culminated in a series of uprisings throughout the decade - notably in 1953 - which were put down forcefully. Political power in the GDR was vested in the sole hands of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED - Socialist Unity Party), an amalgam of leftist and pre-war anti-fascist parties dominated by the Communist Party. Walter Ulbricht was succeeded as Party First Secretary in 1971 by Erich Honecker, who remained in the post almost until the end of the GDR. As with West Germany, relations with the `other' germany dominated the political agenda in the GDR. Ostpolitik was continued by Brandt's successor, Helmut Schmidt, and by the Government which took office after the SPD lost its overall majority at the 1980 election. This was a coalition of the SPD and the small centrist Free Democrats, then led by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who became West Germany's Foreign Minister for the next 12 years. The coalition collapsed in 1982 after which the Free Democrats promptly switched sides and teamed up with the right-wing Christian Democrats (CDU) under Helmut Kohl. Two general elections later, Kohl is still Chancellor, but now of a unified Germany. The dramatic process of unification began with the accession of Gorbachev in Moscow and accelerated after mid-1989. Amid massive daily demonstrations in the GDR's major cities, the Politburo, the Berlin Wall and the SED leadership fell in turn between the beginning of November 1989 and the end of the year. The GDR acquired its only non-Communist President, the liberal democrat Manfred Gerlach. The first free election for a national GDR leadership was held in March 1990, and victory went to the centre-right Alliance for Germany coalition led by Lothar de Mazière and firmly backed by Chancellor Kohl and the CDU. The Party for Democratic Socialism - the SED as was - took a respectable third place, behind the Social Democrats. The decision on unification was not, of course, exclusively one for the Germans: the agreement of the wartime Allies was required. The West presented no problems. Washington was enthusiastic, while Paris and London were luke-warm but in no way obstructive. Real difficulty was expected, however, from the Soviet Union, whose nuclear delivery systems and 300,000 plus troops in the GDR were a cornerstone of Soviet defence strategy. The new Germany, with nearly 80 million people and twice the GNP of the EU's next largest member, will ultimately dominate the Union. And one of the persisting anomalies of modern Germany may be resolved: that its economic power has not nearly been matched by its international political influence. The political complexion of united Germany's government was decided at national elections on December 3, 1990: as expected, Chancellor Kohl's CDU-controlled alliance won a comfortablemajority.
German after unity exercise a strong economy and a very democratic society . Before the unification the two germans were totally different economically and politically. Economically west was market economy oriented and the east was socialist. The political condition the west was democratic and liberal the east was socialist and undemocratic.
The media in both Germanys were in different situations before unification. East German had a government owned media which reflected the interest of the government only ; but in the west most of it was owned by private companyıs and was able to express the freely what it wanted it was the peopleıs voice unlike the east one which was the instrument of the government.
Well as a humanbeing when we describe about something we all start talking about the weak side and the bad part of something more easily than the good part . The same thing about Germany ; when we think about Germany we always remember the second world war , the holocaust and the neo-nazis but Germany has a lot to give to the world more than that . People are always innocent. There are no bad people . There is only bad administration. People shouldnıt be blamed for what has been done by few bad elements. Germanyıs people have a good heart and good culture to be experienced . Let us always start seeing the good part of Germany not the bad part . The real German is really enjoyable and always interesting.