Germany Timeline
1000 BC Warlike tribes began to migrate from northern Europe into what is now Germany.
100 BC The Tribes moved south to the northern frontiers of the Roman Empire. The Romans called the tribes Germani. They called the land of the tribes Germania.
9 AD The Romans tried to conquer the tribes. During a battle at the Teutoburg Forest, the Germanic warriors crushed the Romans. As a result the Romans built a wall between the Rhine and Danube Rivers to protect their land.
300s Roman power began to decline.
400s Germanic tribes went south and defeated much of the Roman Empire. The kingdom of the Franks became the most important of the tribes.
486 Clovis, king of the Franks, defeated the Roman governor of Gaul (now mainly France). Clovis continued to defeat other Germanic tribes and extended his kingdom into what is now western Germany.
700s Most peasant farmers had become serfs.
768 Charlemagne became ruler of the Franks. He established his capital in Aachen. He established his kingdom east to the Elbe River.
800 Charlemagne was crowned the emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III.
843 Charlemagne's kingdom was divided into three kingdoms under the Treaty of Verdun. Louis II received the lands east of the Rhine River most of which would later become Germany.
911 The German kingdom had been divided into five powerful duchies, Bavaria, Lorraine, Franconia, Saxony, and Swabia. Conrad I of Franconia was elected the king by the dukes.
919 Henry I of Saxony succeeded Conrad.
955 Otto I, son of Henry I, drove the Hungarians out of southern Germany. He also extended the German territory in the north. He won control over most of the old middle Frankish kingdom, including Italy.
962 Otto was crowned the emperor of Rome. It marked the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.
1024 The Salian dynasty took control of the kingdom.
1075 Pope Gregory VII disputed the right of Henry IV to appoint bishops. Many princes agreed with the pope, and a series of civil wars broke out.
1138 The Hohenstaufen emperors took control and reestablished order.
1254 The Hohenstaufen dynasty died out. Disorder returned to the kingdom.
1300s The emperors were almost powerless.
1438 The Habsburg dynasty began a rule that continued until 1806.
1517 Martin Luther, a German monk, began attacking many teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Many people joined his movement. They were called Protestants.
1524-1525 The Peasants' War took place. The peasants revolted against their lords in search of freedom. However, they were brutally crushed.
1555 Emperor Charles V was forced to accept the Protestant when they signed a treaty called the Peace of Augsburg.
1500s The Roman Catholic Church underwent the Catholic Reformation.
1600 By this year relatively few Protestants were left in Austria, Bavaria, and parts of Bohemia and the Rhineland. However, Germany remained mostly Lutheran.
1618 A Protestant revolt in Bohemia set off the Thirty Years' War.
1618 The ruler of Brandenburg inherited the duchy of Prussia.
1640 Frederick William became the ruler of Brandenburg. He expanded and united his land.
24 October 1648 The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War.
1701 Frederick became the first king of Prussia.
1740 Frederick the Great became the king of Prussia. He seized Silesia, an important province of Austria. This led to a war between Prussia and Austria.
1740 The War of Austrian Succession began.
1748 The War of Austrian Succession ended.
1756 The Seven Years' War began
1763 The Seven Years' War ended. In the peace treaty at the end of the war, Silesia remained in Prussian control.
1700s Austria and Prussia began to seize parts of Poland
1806 By this year Napoleon had taken parts of western Germany. He had set up dependent states and destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.
1806 The Confederation of the Rhine was established by Napoleon. These German states were allies to France.
1806 Prussia declared war on France. Napoleon crushed the Prussians in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt.
1812 Napoleon's Russian Campaign failed. As a result, Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, and Russia joined against France.
1813 The Prussians helped defeat Napoleon at Leipzig
1814-1815 The victorious powers met in Vienna to restore order to Europe. The Congress of Vienna also established the German Confederation. It was a union of 39 independent German states. Austria appointed the president.
1815 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo with the help of the Prussians.
February 1848 The people of Paris rebelled against their king. Soon after, the German people heard the news of the rebellion, and the y followed.
October 1848 Austrian troops began to recapture their land.
December 1848 Prussian troops dissolved the new Prussian assembly.
March 1849 German delegates from the independent states met at the Frankfurt Assembly. The members compromised on a constitution that called for an emperor and a two-house parliament. They asked the Prussian king Frederick William IV to be the emperor, but he refused. As a result the assembly broke up.
Spring 1849 The Revolution was defeated and the German Confederation was reestablished.
1862 Otto von Bismarck was appointed the prime minister of Prussia.
1864-1870 Bismarck had the German states fight three short wars.
1864 Austria and Prussia, in the Name of the German Confederation, took the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark.
1866 Bismarck began a quarrel with Austria. His army defeated the Austrians at Koniggratz in what was called the Seven Weeks' War. Bismarck then dissolved the German Confederation and annexed some territory to Prussia. He established the North German Confederation, which was under Prussian leadership.
1870 Bismarck encouraged the Hohenzollern prince to accept the throne in Spain. France objected. Bismarck used the dispute to begin the Franco-Prussian War.
September 1870 The Germans defeated the main French army.
January 1871 Germany captured Paris.
18 January 1871 Wilhelm I was crowned the first Kaiser of the German Empire, which united the German states into one country. Bismarck was appointed chancellor and head of the government.
1873 Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia formed an alliance, but it soon failed
1879 Bismarck formed a military and political alliance with Austria-Hungary.
1880s Germany established colonies in Africa and on islands in the Pacific.
1882 Italy joined the alliance, and it was called the Triple Alliance.
1888 Wilhelm I died. He was succeeded by his son Frederick III. Frederick was extremely ill, and his reign only lasted 99 days. Wilhelm II then became the Kaiser.
1890 Wilhelm forced Bismarck to resign.
1894 Russia allied itself with France in fear of Wilhelm's ambition.
1904 The United Kingdom allied itself with France in the Entente Cordiale.
1907 The United Kingdom allied itself with Russia. France, Russia, and the United Kingdom formed the Triple Entente.
28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
28 July 1914 As a result of the assignation Austria declared war on Serbia
August 1914 Russia then began to prepare troops to support Serbia
August 1914 Germany declared war on Russia. France as a result called up its troops to support Russia, so Germany went to war with France. Germany invaded neutral Belgium, and soon after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.
1914 German troops held Luxembourg, most of Belgium, and part of northern France.
1915 Italy joined the Allies, hoping to gain Austrian land.
1917 The United States entered the war on the side of the Allies.
1917 Germany won the Eastern front as the Russian war effort collapsed.
1918 Germany's armies were exhausted and they were low on supplies. French American troops kept arriving to help the Allies
Summer 1918 The Americans helped to stop the last great German offensive.
November 1918 Germany troops and workers revolted against the continuing war.
9 November 1918 Germany troops and workers revolted against the continuing war.
11 November 1918 Germany signed an armistice. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, gave the German part of Lorraine to France. Poland was reestablished. France got control of the Saar region for fifteen years. The Rhineland was placed under Allied occupation for fifteen years. Germany's army was reduced to 100,000 men and they were forbidden from having an air force. Germany was also required to pay reparations in the amount of $33 billion.
19 January 1919 German voters elected a national assembly to write a constitution. They met in Weimar. The new republic became known as the Weimar Republic.
17 February 1919 Germany signed an armistice giving up territory in Poland.
August 1919 The republic set up a parliament of two houses, the Reichstag and the Reichsrat, and a president elected by the people. The Chancellor was to be appointed by the president, but the Reichstag could remove him from office.
14 January 1920 Berlin was placed under martial law as 40,000 radicals rushed the Reichstag; 42 were killed and 105 wounded.
1922-1923 The German economy collapsed, and inflation ruined the value of the Germany money.
1923 The National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) attempted an armed rebellion led by Adolf Hitler. They were unsuccessful.
1924 The Allies made it easier for Germany to pay the World War I reparations.
1925 Gustav Stresemann, the chancellor, signed a security pact with France and Belgium.
1929 The Great Depression began.
1930-1933 President Paul von Hindenburg and his chancellors made laws without the approval of parliament.
1933 Hindenburg appointed Hitler as the chancellor.
1 April 1933 Nazi Germany began persecuting Jews with a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.
1934 Hindenburg died. Hitler declared himself der Fuhrer. The Nazi government was called the Third Reich.
1935 The rights of German Jews were taken away.
1936 Germany occupied the Rhineland.
10 April 1938 Germany annexed Austria.
September 1938 France and the United Kingdom allowed Hitler to take over the German speaking parts of Czechoslovakia.
9-10 November 1938 Nazis crowds burned down Jewish synagogue and Jewish businesses. Later the night became known as Kristallnacht.
16 March 1939 Germany occupied the rest Czechoslovakia.
1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, which started World War II.
3 September 1939 France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.
Spring 1940 Germany captured Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
May 1940 Germany invaded France.
June 1940 France came under German control.
June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
7 December 1941 The United States entered the War.
1943 The Soviets returned the German attack, and began pushing the Germans out of their land.
June 1944 The Allies attacked France.
December 1944 The Germans led their last offensive, which was unsuccessful.
30 April 1945 Hitler committed suicide.
7 May 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies.
June 1945 The United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union (the Big Four) took control of Germany. The country was divided into four zones of military occupation. Berlin was also divided into four zones.
July-August 1945 Leaders from the United States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union met in Potsdam and agreed to govern Germany together and rebuild it into a democracy.
June 1948 The Western Allies began to rebuild their zones of occupation. The Soviet responded by stopping all travel between western Germany and West Berlin. The Allies set up the Berlin Airlift.
May 1949 The Soviets lifted the blockade of Berlin.
May 1949 The Allies approved a constitution for western Germany. The Soviets approved a Communist-prepared constitution for East Germany.
21 September 1949 The Western Zones formed the Federal Republic of Germany. The Allied High Commission replaced the military governors.
7 October 1949 The German Democratic Republic was formed (East Germany).
5 May 1955 The Allied high Commission was dissolved. West Germany became completely independent.
1955 West Germany joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
August 1961 The Berlin Wall was built.
9 November 1989 The Berlin Wall was broke open. Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West. Joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.
5 December 1989 East Germany's former leaders, including ousted Communist Party chief Erich Honecker, were placed under house arrest.
18 March 1990 East Germans voted in free parliamentary elections for the first time.
July 1990 The economies of East and West Germany were reunited, using the same currency.
12 September 1990 The Allied powers gave up the rights to Berlin.
3 October 1990 East and West Germany reunited
1993 The German constitution was amended to decrease the flow of immigrants into the country.
1999 Germany and other members of the European Community adopted a common currency.
1 January 2002 The Euro became the currency of Germany.
Works Cited
Sheehan, James J. "Germany." Worldbookonline.com.
Ratnikas, Algis. Today in History. Online. http://timelines.ws/TODAY.HTML.