GERMANY, FLAG OF

horizontally striped black-red-yellow national flag; when used for official purposes, it may incorporate a central eagle shield. The flag has a width-to-length ratio of 3 to 5. Prior to its abolition in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, the Holy Roman Empire included hundreds of German-speaking states. During the French administration a nationalist movement arose that was determined to free Germany from foreign rule and create a unified nation. Among the organizations active in that cause was the Ltzowian Free Corps, whose members wore uniforms of black with gold and red accessories. Other groups, including the Jena Students' Association, subsequently adopted the same three colours for their flags. The 1832 mass rally at Hambach saw thousands of students from throughout Germany marching under a horizontal tricolour of black-red-yellow. Many people believed that those colours were derived from the black eagle (with red beak and claws) appearing on the gold shield of the Holy Roman Empire, even though this was not the inspiration for the tricolour. That flag was also briefly used by the German Confederation of 184852. When Germany was unified at the end of the 19th century, the national flag had stripes of black-white-red. After the defeat of the Second Reich in World War I, that flag was replaced by the black-red-yellow under the Weimar Republic. Many Germans, however, rallied around other flags they felt better represented the true German spirit. The red banner of the communists, the black-white-red of the Second Reich, and the new swastika flag of the Nazis all contended for allegiance. From 1933 to 1945 the Nazi symbols were dominant. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) restored the old black-red-yellow flag on May 9, 1949, and the government made use of a similar flag with the eagle shield in the centre. The plain tricolour was also used in the communist-dominated German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany), although its coat of arms was added to the tricolour in 1959. The GDR flag disappeared in 1990 when the two Germanys were reunited in a single state. No changes were made in the symbols of the Federal Republic at the time of reunion. Whitney Smith History Merovingians and Carolingians When the western Roman Empire ended in 476, the Germanic tribes west of the Rhine were not politically united. The west Germanic tribes, however, spoke dialects of a common language and shared social and political traditions. The traditions of these tribes had been influenced by centuries of contact with the Roman world, both as federated troops within the empire and as participants in the broader political and economic network that extended beyond the Roman frontier. In particular a strongly military structure of social organization, under the direction of commanders termed kings or dukes, had developed among the federated tribes within the empire and spread to tribes living outside the empire proper. Likewise, the Ostrogothic kings in Italy extended their influence over much of the Germanic world north of the Alps. Merovingian Germany The Franks, settled in Romanized Gaul and western Germany, rejected Ostrogothic leadership and began to expand their kingdom eastward. Clovis' conversion to orthodox Christianity was an overt challenge to Ostrogothic hegemony to the east and to Visigothic control to the south. He and his successors, particularly Theodebert I (reigned 534548), brought much of what would later constitute Germany under Frankish control, including the Thuringians of central Germany and the Alemanni and Bavarians of the south. Generally these heterogenous groups were given a law code including Frankish and local traditions and were governed by a duke of mixed Frankish and indigenous background who represented the Frankish king. In times of strong central leadership, as under Dagobert I (629639), this leadership could have real effect. At other times, when the Frankish realm was badly divided or embroiled in civil wars, local dukes enjoyed great autonomy. This was particularly true of the Bavarian Agilolfings, who were closely related to the Lombard royal family of Italy and who by the 8th century enjoyed virtual royal status. In the north the Frisians and Saxons remained independent of Frankish control into the 8th century, preserving their own political and social structures and remaining for the most part pagan. In areas under Frankish lordship, Christianity made considerable progress through the efforts of native Raetians in the Alpine regions, of wandering Irish missionaries, and of transplanted Frankish aristocrats who supported monastic foundations. History Germany from 911 to 1250 The 10th and 11th centuries Conrad I (911918) Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries. When in 911 Louis the Child, last of the East Frankish Carolingians, died without leaving a male heir, it seemed quite possible that his kingdom would break into pieces. In at least three of the four stem lands, Bavaria, Saxony, and Franconia, the ducal families were established in the leadership of their tribes; in Swabia (Alemannia) two houses were still fighting for hegemony. Only the church, fearing for its endowments, had an obvious interest in the future of the monarchy, its ancient protector. Against the growing authority of the dukes and the deep differences in dialect, in customs, and in social structure between the tribes there stood only the Carolingian tradition of kingship; but, with Charles the Simple as holder of the West Frankish kingdom, its future was uncertain and not very hopeful. Only the Lotharingians put their faith in the ancient line and did homage to Charles, its sole reigning representative. The other component parts of the East Frankish kingdom did not follow suit. One can only guess at the motives of the Saxon and Frankish tribal hosts who on Nov. 10, 911, elected Conrad, duke of the Franks, as their king at Forchheim in Franconia. At the opening of the 10th century the Germanic peoples in the lands east of the Rhine and west of the Elbe, the Saale, and the Bohemian forestas rudimentary and as thinly spread as their settlements werehad to face even more primitive and pagan races pressing in from farther east, especially the Magyars. The Saxons, headed by their duke Otto of the house of the Liudolfings, were threatened by more enemies on their frontiers than any other tribe; Danes, Slavs, and Magyars simultaneously harassed their homeland. A king who commanded resources farther west, in Franconia, might therefore prove to be of help to Saxony. The Rhenish Franks, on the other hand, did not wish to abdicate from their position as the leading and kingmaking people, which gave them many material advantages. Conrad of Franconia, elected by Franks and Saxons, was soon recognized also by Arnulf, duke of Bavaria, and by the Swabian clans. In descent, honours, and wealth, however, Conrad was no more than the equal of the dukes who had accepted him as king. To gain a lead over them, to found a new royal house, and to acquire those wonder-working attributes that the Germans venerated in their rulers long after they had been converted to Christianity, he had yet to prove himself able, lucky, and successful. In this period, political affairs became the monopoly of the German kings and a few score families of great magnates. The reason for this concentration of power was that, at the very foundation of the German kingdom, circumstances had long favoured those men whom birth, wealth, and military success had raised well above the ranks of the ordinary free members of their tribe. Their estates were cultivated in the main by half-free peasantsslaves who had risen or freemen who had sunk. The holdings of these dependents fell under the power of the lord to whom they owed service and obedience. Already they were tied to the lands on which they laboured and were dependent on their protectors for justice. For many reasons ordinary freemen tended generally to lose their independence and had to seek aid from their more fortunate and powerful neighbours; thus, they lost their standing in the assemblies of their tribe. Everywhere, except in Friesland and parts of Saxony, the nobles wedged themselves between king or duke and the rank and file. They alone could become prelates of the church, and they alone could compete for the possession and enjoyment of governmental rights. At the level below the dukes, the bulk of administrative authority, jurisdiction, and command in war lay with the margraves and counts, whose hold on their charges developed gradually into hereditary right. The commended men and the half free disappeared from the important functions of public life. In the local assemblies they came only to pay dues and to receive orders, justice, and penalties. Their political role was passive. Those lords whose protection was most worth having also had the largest throng of dependents and thus became more formidable to their enemies and to the remaining freemen. Lordship and submission to it were hereditary, and thus the horizon of the dependent classes narrowed until eventually the lord and his officials filled the place of all secular authority and power in their lives. Military strength, the possession of arms and horses, and tactical training in their use were decisive. Most dependent men were disarmed; that became part of their degradation. The accession of the Saxons Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries. Conrad I was quite unequal to the situation in Germany. According to the beliefs of contemporaries, his failure meant that his house was luckless and lacked the prosperity-bringing virtues that belonged to true kingship. On his deathbed in 918, he therefore proposed that the crown, which in 911 had remained with the Franks, should now pass to the leading man in Saxony, the Liudolfing Henry (later called the Fowler). Henry I was elected by the Saxons and Franks at Fritzlar, their ancient meeting place, in 919. With a monarch of their own race, the Saxons now took over the burden and the rewards of being the kingmaking people. The centre of gravity shifted to eastern Saxony, where the Liudolfing lands lay. The transition of the crown from the Franks to the Saxons for a time enhanced the self-sufficiency of the south German tribes. The Swabians had kept away from the Fritzlar election. The Bavarians believed that they had a better right to the Carolingian inheritance than the Saxons (who had been remote outsiders in the 9th century) and in 919 elected their own duke Arnulf as king. They, too, wanted to be the royal and kingmaking people. Henry I's regime rested in the main on his own position and family demesne in Saxony and on certain ancient royal seats in Franconia. His kingship was purely military. He hoped to gather authority by waging successful frontier wars and to gain recognition in the first place by concessions rather than to insist on the sacred and priestlike status of the royal office that the church had built up in the 9th century. At his election he refused to be anointed and consecrated by the archbishop of Mainz. In settling with the Bavarians, he abandoned the policy of supporting the internal opposition that the clergy offered to Duke Arnulf, a plank to which Conrad had clung. To end Arnulf's rival kingship, Henry formally surrendered to him the most characteristic privilege and honour of the crown: the right to dispose of the region's bishoprics and abbeys. Arnulf's homage and friendship entailed no positive obligations toward Henry, and the Bavarian duke pursued his own tribal interestspeace with the Hungarians and expansion across the Alpsas long as he lived. From these unpromising beginnings the Saxon dynasty not only found its way back to Carolingian traditions of government but soon got far better terms in its relations with the autonomous powers of the duchies, which had gained such a start on it. Nonetheless, the constitution that it bequeathed to its Salian successors was self-contradictory; while seeking to overcome the princely aristocracies of the stem lands by leaving them to themselves, the Saxon kings came to rely more and more, both for the inspiration and for the practice of government, on the prelates of the church, who were themselves recruited from the ranks of the same great families. They loaded bishoprics and abbeys with endowments and privileges and thus gradually turned the bishops and abbots into princes with interests not unlike those of their lay kinsmen. These weaknesses, however, lay concealed behind the personal ascendancy of an exceptionally tough and commanding set of rulers up to the middle of the 11th century. Thereafter, the ambiguous system could not take the strain of the changes fermenting within German society and even less the attack on its values that came from withoutfrom the reformed papacy. The Liudolfing kings won military success, and with it they gained that respect for their personal authority that counted for so much at a time when the great followed only those whose star they trusted and who could reward services with the spoils of victory. In 925 Henry I brought Lotharingia back to the East Frankish connection. Whoever had authority in that half-French-speaking, half-German-speaking region could treat the neighbouring kingdom of the West Franks as a dependent. The young Saxon dynasty thus won for itself and its successors a hegemony over the west and the southwest that lasted at least until the mid-11th century. The Carolingian kings of France, as well as the great feudatories who sought to dominate if not to ruin them, became, in turn, petitioners of the German court during the reign of the Ottos. The kings of Burgundywhose suzerainty lay over the valleys of the Sane and the Rhne, the western Alps, and Provencefell under the virtual tutelage of the masters of Lotharingia. Rich in ancient towns, this region, once the homeland of the Carolingians, was more thickly populated and wealthier than the lands east of the Rhine. Lotharingian merchants controlled the slave trade from the Saxon marches to Crdoba. History The era of partition As a legacy of unconditional surrender at the end of World War II, a truncated Germany was divided into four zones of Allied military occupation; Berlin, the capital between 1871 and 1945 of the unified German Reich, was similarly divided. In 1949 the zones of occupation of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland; commonly known as West Germany), with its capital at Bonn. The three western sectors of Berlin also had a separate administration, beginning in 1948, constituting West Berlin. West Berlin's political affiliation was with West Germany, although it was a detached exclave of territory at a distance of 110 miles (180 kilometres). Also in 1949 the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik; commonly known as East Germany), with its capital in the former Soviet sector of Berlin (i.e., East Berlin). West Germany's recovery from total economic and political prostration and the devastation of its cities and capital industries at the end of World War II was of such dramatic proportions as to become a modern legend. The Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) of the 1950s and '60s made it the world's fourth largest economy after the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan and one of the world's largest trading nations. Domestically, the West German state grew into one of the most stable of Western democracies, with three major political parties competing peacefully for power. In large measure because of the 5 percent of votes required for representation in the federal parliament (Bundestag) and provincial diets, extremist parties of the right and left did not succeed in West German politics. The West Germans as citizens moved from their accustomed political apathy to becoming intensely involved and well-informed on the issues that affected their lives. East Germany was established as a socialist state of the Stalinist type and became a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) and of the Warsaw Pact military alliance. It had the most advanced economy and the highest living standards of all the Soviet-bloc states, but industrially it lagged behind the Western level. To outside observers, the centralized and dictatorial regime of the Socialist Unity Party (a forced union of the Social Democratic Party with the Communists), buttressed by the omnipresent State Security Police (Stasi), appeared unassailable. But the precarious nature of this foundation was demonstrated by the East German government's swift and unforeseen collapse under popular pressure in late 1989, most strikingly symbolized by the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9. At free elections on March 18, 1990, the majority of East Germans, by voting for the counterpart of the West German Christian Democratic Union, signaled their wish to join the Federal Republic at the earliest possible moment (see below, The reunification of Germany). Thomas Henry Elkins George Hall Kirby The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Allied occupation and the formation of the two Germanies, 194549 Following the German military leaders' unconditional surrender in May 1945, the country lay prostrate. The German state ceased to exist, and sovereign authority passed to the victorious Allied powers. The physical devastation from Allied bombing campaigns and from ground battles was enormous: an estimated one-quarter of the nation's housing was destroyed or damaged beyond use, and in many cities the toll exceeded 50 percent. Germany's economic infrastructure had largely collapsed as factories and transportation systems ceased to function. Rampant inflation was undermining the value of the currency, and an acute shortage of food reduced the diet of many city dwellers to the level of malnutrition. These difficulties were compounded by the presence of millions of homeless German refugees from the east. The end of the war came to be remembered as zero hour, a low point from which virtually everything had to be rebuilt anew from the ground up. For purposes of occupation, the Americans, British, French, and Soviets divided Germany into four zones. The American, British, and French zones together made up the western two-thirds of Germany, while the Soviet zone comprised the eastern third. Berlin, the former capital, was placed under joint four-power authority but was partitioned into four sectors for administrative purposes. An Allied Control Council was to exercise overall joint authority. Not all of prewar Germany was included in these arrangements. The Soviets unilaterally severed the German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and placed these under the direct administrative authority of the Soviet Union and Poland, with the larger share going to the Poles as compensation for territory they lost to the Soviet Union. The former provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia were thus stripped from Germany. Since virtually the entire German population of some 9.5 million in these and adjacent regions was expelled westward, this amounted to a de facto annexation of one-quarter of Germany's territory as of 1937, the year prior to the beginning of German expansion under Hitler. The Western Allies acquiesced in these actions by the Soviets, taking consolation in the expectation that their postwar territorial dispositions were merely temporary expedients that would quickly be superseded by the final peace terms. As a result of irreconcilable differences among the Allied powers, however, no peace conference was ever held. The issue of German reparations proved particularly divisive. The Soviet Union, whose population and territory had suffered terribly at the hands of the Germans, demanded large-scale material compensation. The Western Allies initially agreed to extract reparations but soon came to resent the Soviets' seizures of entire German factories as well as current production. Under the terms of inter-Allied agreements, the Soviet zone of occupation, which encompassed much of German agriculture and was less densely populated than those of the other Allies, was to supply foodstuffs to the rest of Germany in return for a share of reparations from the western occupation zones. But when the Soviets failed to deliver the requisite food, the Western Allies found themselves forced to feed the German population in their zones at the expense of their own taxpayers. The Americans and British therefore came to favour a revival of German industry so as to enable the Germans to feed themselves, a step the Soviets opposed. When the Western powers refused in 1946 to permit the Soviets to claim further reparations from their zones, cooperation among the wartime allies deteriorated sharply. During the postwar years two quite different economic and social systems took shape. In the western zones the Allies permitted a market economy based on private property to reemerge, though at the outset under extensive regulation. The emergence of a free and pluralistic press was also fostered. In carrying out the policy of de-Nazification agreed upon by all four Allied powers, the Western occupation authorities sought to punish those Germans who had been deeply involved in the Nazi regime while levying lighter penalties on those less implicated. The Soviets proceeded against former Nazis in their occupation zone more summarily and with little attempt at differentiating among degrees of complicity. They subjected the press and all other means of communication in their zone to increasingly close censorship. In the economic sphere they nationalized most industries without compensation for the previous owners, and they effected a sweeping agrarian reform by expropriating large estates and distributing the land among small farmers. Beginning in the summer of 1945, the occupation authorities permitted the formation of German political parties preparatory to elections for new local and regional representative assemblies. Two of the major leftist parties of the Weimar era quickly revived: the moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the German Communist Party (KPD), which was loyal to the Soviet Union. These were soon joined by a new creation, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The leaders of this Christian Democratic coalition had for the most part been active in the moderate parties of the Weimar Republic, especially the Catholic Centre Party. They sought to win popular support on the basis of a nondenominational commitment to Christian ethics and democratic institutions. Liberal-minded Germans who favoured a secular state and laissez-faire economic policies formed a new Free Democratic Party in the western zones and a Liberal Democratic Party in the Soviet zone. Numerous smaller parties were also launched in the western zones. In April 1946, under pressure from the occupation authorities, the Social Democratic leaders in the Soviet zone agreed to merge with the Communists, a step denounced by the Social Democrats in the western zones. The resulting Socialist Unity Party (SED) swept to victory with the ill-concealed aid of the Soviets in the first elections for local and regional assemblies in the Soviet zone. However, when in October 1946 elections were held under fairer conditions in Berlin, which was under four-power occupation, the SED tallied fewer than half as many votes as the Social Democratic Party, which had managed to preserve its independence in the old capital. Thereafter, the SED, which increasingly fell under communist domination as Social Democrats were systematically purged from its leadership ranks, avoided free, competitive elections by forcing all other parties to join a permanent coalition under its leadership. The occupying powers soon approved the formation of regional organs of self-administration called Lnder (singular Land), or states. By 1947 those Lnder established in the western zones had freely elected parliamentary assemblies. Institutional developments followed a superficially similar pattern in the Soviet zone, but there the political process remained less than free because of the dominance of the Soviet-backed SED. When it had become apparent by 1947 that the Soviet Union would not permit free, multiparty elections throughout the whole of Germany, the Americans and British amalgamated the German administrative organs in their occupation zones in order to foster economic recovery. The resulting unit, called Bizonia, operated through a set of German institutions located in the city of Frankfurt am Main. Its federative structure would later serve as the model for the West German state. In the politics of Bizonia, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats quickly established themselves as the major political parties. The Social Democrats held to their long-standing commitment to nationalization of basic industries and extensive government control over other aspects of the economy. The Christian Democrats, after initially inclining to a vaguely conceived Christian socialism, swung to espousal of a basically free-enterprise orientation. In March 1948 they joined with the laissez-faire Free Democrats to install as architect of Bizonia's economy Ludwig Erhard, a previously obscure economist who advocated freeing the economy from government control. When repeated meetings with the Soviets failed to produce four-power cooperation, the Western occupying powers decided in the spring of 1948 to move on their own. They were particularly concerned about the deteriorating economic conditions throughout occupied Germany, which burdened their own countries and awakened fears of renewed political extremism among the Germans. The Western powers therefore decided to extend to their occupation zones American economic aid, which had been instituted elsewhere in western Europe a year earlier under the Marshall Plan. To enhance the effectiveness of that aid, the Americans, British, and French effected a currency reform in their zones that replaced Germany's badly inflated currency with a new, hard Deutsche Mark, or DM. Western Germany's economy responded quickly, as goods previously unavailable for nearly worthless money came onto the market. The Soviets responded angrily to the currency reform, which was undertaken without their approval. When the new Deutsche Mark was introduced into Berlin, they protested vigorously and boycotted the Allied Control Council. Then, in June 1948 they blockaded the western sectors of the old capital, which were surrounded by territory occupied by the Soviet Red Army and lay about 100 miles from the nearest Western-occupied area. By sealing off the railways, highways, and canals used to deliver food and fuel, as well as the raw materials needed for the factories of a city of more than two million people, the Soviets sought to paralyze West Berlin and drive out their erstwhile allies. They were thwarted, however, when the Western powers mounted an around-the-clock airlift that supplied the West Berliners with food and fuel throughout the bleak winter of 194849. In May 1949 the Soviets relented and lifted the blockade. History Germany from 1250 to 1493 1250 to 1378 The extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty The death of Frederick II in 1250 and of his son Conrad IV in 1254 heralded the irreversible decline of Hohenstaufen power in Germany and in the conjoint kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. Conrad's infant son Conradin, heir to Naples and Sicily, remained in Germany under the guardianship of his Bavarian mother. His uncle Manfred seized the reins of government in both Italian kingdoms and in 1258 formally supplanted Conradin by engineering his own coronation in Palermo. Manfred's defiance of papal claims to suzerainty over the kingdoms impelled the French-born Pope Urban IV to grant them to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France. Papal taxation of the French clergy and loans from Florentine bankers enabled Charles to raise a large mercenary army for an expedition to Italy. Manfred, deserted by his barons, was defeated and slain near Benevento in 1266. Conradin then rallied his German supporters and led them across the Alps. But Conradin's financial resources were inadequate; unpaid troops deserted, and his depleted following was routed by Charles near Tagliacozzo (1268). Conradin was captured as he fled toward Rome, convicted of lese majesty (a form of treason), and beheaded in the public square at Naples. The Great Interregnum In Germany, the death of Frederick II ushered in the Great Interregnum (125073), a period of internal confusion and political disorder. The antikings Henry Raspe (landgrave of Thuringia, 124647) and Count William of Holland (ruled 124756) were elected by the leading ecclesiastical princes at the behest of the papacy. William's title was recognized initially only in the lower Rhineland, but his marriage to Elizabeth of Brunswick in 1252 ensured his acceptance by the interrelated princely dynasties of north Germany. The death of the Hohenstaufen Conrad IV left William without a rival in Germany. His growing strength and independence enabled him to escape from the tutelage of his ecclesiastical electors and to devote himself to purely dynastic policies. He pursued his feud with Margaret, countess of Flanders, over their conflicting territorial claims in Zeeland at the mouth of the Rhine. He renewed the attempts of his dynasty to obtain complete mastery of the Zuider Zee by thrusting eastward at the expense of Friesland; he died at the hands of the Frisians in 1256. Pope Alexander IV forbade the election of a Hohenstaufen but interfered no further with the succession. Hence the initiative was taken by a small group of influential German princes, lay and ecclesiastical, acting out of self-interest. None desired the election of a ruler powerful enough to threaten their growing independence as territorial princes; nor did they single out a German candidate, who might prove to be as uncontrollable as William. Archbishop Conrad of Cologne approached Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III of England. Richard's gifts and assurances of future favour brought him the votes of the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, the count palatine of the Rhine, and Otakar II of Bohemia. He was formally elected in 1257 and crowned king at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). Three months after Richard's election, Alfonso X of Castile, who aspired to the empire in order to strengthen his foothold in Italy, was chosen in similar fashion by the archbishop of Trier, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the devious Otakar. The candidates were distracted by the turbulence of the aristocracy in their countriesRichard paid four fleeting visits to Germany; Alfonso failed to appear at all. Both appealed to the papacy for confirmation of their election. Their claims were summarized in Urban IV's bull Qui Coelum (1263), which assumed that the exclusive right of election lay with the seven leading princes involved in the double election of 1257. History Germany from 1918 to 1945 The German Republic, 191833 The republic proclaimed early in the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 9, 1918, is often called the accidental republic. When Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the so-called Majority Socialists, accepted the imperial chancellorship from Maximilian, Prince of Baden, it was with the understanding that he would do his utmost to save the imperial system from revolution. Ebert believed that the only way to accomplish this would be by transforming Germany into a constitutional monarchy. Elections would have to be held for a constituent assembly, whose task it would be to draw up a new constitution. Defeat of revolutionaries, 191819 Ebert, however, was faced with a precarious situation. The dangers confronting him were mounting all over the country. Four and a half years of war and sacrifice were giving way to a war-weariness that was leaving the imperial system, as well as its emperor, discredited. Shortages of food and fuel had rendered the population vulnerable to the influenza epidemic sweeping Europe. On October 18 alone Berlin authorities had reported 1,700 influenza deaths. Independent Socialists in Munich had forced the abdication on November 8 of Bavaria's King Ludwig III and proclaimed a Bavarian socialist republic. The port cities along the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were falling into the hands of sailors' and workers' and soldiers' councils (Rte) in the wake of the naval mutiny at Kiel in early November. Berlin's radical leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were eager to transform Germany into a republic of workers' and soldiers' councils (a Rterepublik) in imitation of the soviet republic being established by the Bolshevik leaders in Russia. As Ebert was accepting the reins of government in the Reichstag building on November 9, Liebknecht was addressing a rally of his own followers in front of the deserted Royal Palace about a mile away. Among Marxist revolutionaries the view was widespread that the Bolshevik revolution was merely the spark that would set off the worldwide proletarian revolution predicted by Karl Marx. Inevitably, that revolution would have to spread to Germany. Given this ideologically charged scenario, Liebknecht confidently anticipated his destiny to become the German Lenin. While the Liebknecht rally was proceeding in front of the Royal Palace, an angry crowd was gathering before the governmental headquarters in the Reichstag building. Because Ebert had just left the building, his friend and fellow Majority Socialist Philipp Scheidemann felt called upon to address the crowd. To meet its inevitable demands for change and to forestall whatever Liebknecht might be telling his followers, Scheidemann in his speech used the phrase Long live the German Republic! Once said, the proclamation of a republic could not be withdrawn. Ebert was furious when he learned of Scheidemann's accidental proclamation, but he realized that there was no turning back. He spent the afternoon seeking partners to form a provisional government to run the newly proclaimed republic. By nightfall he managed to persuade the Independent Socialists, a party that in 1917 had split from the Majority Socialists over the continuation of the war, to provide three members of a provisional government. To gain their cooperation, Ebert had to agree to naming the provisional government the Council of Peoples' Commissars and to transforming Germany into a vaguely defined social republic. This promise notwithstanding, Ebert still hoped that elections to a constituent assembly would lead to the creation of a moderate democratic republic. The Independent Socialists, however, though not as radical as Liebknecht, held to their vision of a socialist Rterepublik. They hoped that workers and soldiers would elect a multitude of councils across the entire nation during the next weeks, which they assumed would establish the foundation for a genuinely socialist republic. For the time being, however, Majority and Independent Socialists were joined in providing provisional governance for the defeated German nation, which everywhere seemed on the verge of collapse. Although the armistice of November 11 ended the fighting, it did not end the Allied blockade. The winter of 191819 brought no relief in the shortages of food and fuel, and the flu epidemic showed no signs of abatement. Soldiers returning from the military fronts by the hundreds of thousands were left stranded, jobless, hungry, and bittergrist for the mill of revolution. The push for revolution, led by an enthusiastic Liebknecht and a more reluctant Luxemburg, came on Jan. 6, 1919, encouraged by Soviet Russia and further prompted by fear that Ebert's plans for the election of a constituent assembly, scheduled for January 19, might stabilize the German situation. The Spartacists, now officially the Communist Party of Germany, initiated massive demonstrations in Berlin and quickly seized key government and communications centres. The events of Spartacist Week, as the radical attempt at revolution came to be known, demonstrated that Germany was not nearly as ripe for revolution as its leaders had thought it to be. As Luxemburg had feared, mass support among German workers for communism did not exist; most of them remained loyal to the Independent Socialists or to Ebert's more moderate and democratic vision of socialism. The German Army, moreover, had recovered its nerve and was determined to prevent a further move to the left. In December the army had begun secretly to train volunteer units drawn from the sea of soldiers returning from the front. These so-called Freikorps (free corps) units became the basis for the dozens of small right-wing armies that during the next years roamed the country, looking for revolutionary activity to suppress. The Spartacist revolt, which was confined largely to Berlin, was put down within a week by some 3,000 Freikorps men. When Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured on January 15, they were both shot at the initiative of Freikorps officers. Although sporadic revolutionary activity continued elsewhere in Germany during the next months, its failure in Berlin clearly marked its doom. The proclamation on April 4, 1919, of a Rterepublik in Bavaria revived radical fortunes only briefly; Freikorps units put down the radical Bavarian republic by the end of the month. The collapse of the Spartacist revolt greatly enhanced the chances for Ebert's vision of Germany's future to prevail. Moreover, the meeting of a national congress of workers' and soldiers' councils in mid-December 1918, upon which the Independent Socialists had pinned their own hopes for creating a socialist republic, proved to be far less radical than expected; it did nothing to interfere with Ebert's plans to elect an assembly to draw up a democratic constitution. The elections on Jan. 19, 1919, which for the first time included women, produced a resounding victory for Ebert's conception of democracy. Three of every four voters gave their support to political parties that favoured turning Germany into a democracy. After months of turmoil Germany was to become a democratic republic. The assembly began its deliberations on Feb. 6, 1919, choosing to meet in Weimar, where it believed itself less vulnerable to radical political interference than in Berlin. On Jan. 18, 1919, representatives of the powers victorious over Germany began the deliberations in Paris that would establish a European peace settlement. Germany's new democratic leaders placed high hopes in the prospects for this settlement. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points seemed to promise Germans national self-determination as well as to encourage the efforts to transform Germany into a democracy. When the German constituent assembly met in Weimar for the first time on February 6, it immediately declared itself sovereign over all Germany. It selected a provisional governmentwith Ebert as president and Scheidemann as chancellorwhose first major task was to prepare for the expected invitation to Paris to negotiate a treaty of peace with the empire's former enemies. But the invitation for a German delegation to come to Paris did not arrive until early April. Rather than being treated as a fellowif fledglingdemocracy, Germans soon learned that they were still viewed as the bad boys of Europe. Wilson's idealism had been forced to yield to still-fresh wartime resentments being articulated by the leaders of the French, British, and Italian delegations. There were to be no negotiations about a peace treaty. Germany would simply be handed a treaty and told to sign. History Germany from 1493 to c. 1760 Reform and Reformation: 14931555 The empire in 1493 The reign of Maximilian I (14931519) was dominated by the interplay of three issues of decisive importance to the future of the Holy Roman Empire: the rise of the Austrian House of Habsburg to international prominence, the urgent need to reform the empire's governing institutions, and the beginnings of the religious and social movement known as the Reformation. The accession of the dynamic and imaginative Maximilian to the German throne aroused in many Germans, and in particular among humanists, expectations of a time when the old imperial ideathe vision of the empire as the political expression of a united Christendom in which the emperor, as God's deputy, rules over a universal realm of peace and ordermight become a reality. Since the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in