Die Deutschen

- Season 1

(2008)

Charlemagne, king of the Franconian tribe, founded the Holy Roman Empire, but is disintegrated by dividing succession without creating a nation, hence he's revered equally by Germany and France (East - viz. West Francia). Father of the medieval German nation, till then little more then a linguistic grouping of the Franconian, Saxon, Bavarian and Swabian (alias Allemannen) tribes (and duchies, the real political entities) was the Saxon duke Otto I, crowned king by the archbishop of Mainz (Mayence) in 961. His authority rested upon the successful defense of Germany, and...

German king Henry IV, future emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was orphaned young and traumatized during his mother's regency and his own kidnapping till majority by the imperial bishops and princes. When the reformist monk Hldebrandt became pope Gregory IV, declared only the Holy Chair superior by divine right to all earthly monarchs and denied them the investiture (right to install bishops, traditionally the emperor-loyal counterweight to feudal dynasties), Henry started a power struggle. Excommunicated, Henry had to beg readmission to the church at Canossa castle, ...

Frederic I Barbarossa, whose (Hohen) Staufian dynasty's 'home duchies' were in the Southwest, successfully unestablished himself as German king when his cousin duke Henry the Lion, of the northern main duchy Saxony's Welfian dynasty, helped him subdue Italy -horribly sacking mighty Milan, which held out last- and the pope crowned him Roman Emperor in 1155. Frederic's grand dynastic wedding to the Burgundian duke's daughter was followed by a dispute over a papal address using 'beneficium', which can mean either favor or feudal grant, to which he responded proclaiming ...

Augustinian monk Marthin Luther spearheaded protests in the Holy Roman Empire against abuses in the Catholic church, where often aristocratic prelates behaved like princes rather then pastors. His 'back to the Bible' reasoning became opportune for many princes opposing the autocratic aspirations of Habsurg king of Spain Charles, elected Roman Emperor, who got Luther condemned in the Diet, but the Saxon elector, who remained Catholic, offered him sanctuary. Luther sides with the princes against the great peasant rising, translated the Bible into German and escaped ...

The Empire had settled on the principle of rulers determining their principalities' religion, but then Habsburg king of Bohemia and 'soon to be elected' Emperor Ferdinand's attempt to impose his Catholicism on the mainly protestant Bohemians (against the oath of his enthronement) caused an escalation of violence spreading through Germany beyond his financial means: the Thirty Years War wrecked the country and killed a third of the population. The Bohemian nobleman Albrecht von Wallerstein offered an alternative: an army of 50,000 mercenaries paid for by being allowed ...

Frederic II the Great of Prussia and the contemporary Habsburg imperial couple, archduchess Maria Theresia and husband Francis, rivaled for preeminence in the German heartland of the empire. Frederic modeled his capital Berlin on Versailles, Vienna was Europe's grandest royal city. Frederic's superior army, an immense burden on his small population, performed superbly in great wars, mainly over Silesia and Saxony. Still, they were excessive risks, possibly the result of a most frustrated youth as sensitive, culture-hungry crown prince abused by a brutish father who ...

Paradoxically, nobody did more for the emergence of Germany in the 18th and 19th century then Napoléon. At first he was welcomed as a liberator and modernizer, replacing feudal privileges and traditions with more rational administration, but as his continuous wars exacted a high price on the people in blood and taxes he became hated as a foreign oppressor. He defeated Prussia and Austria, who lost territory, annexed the left bank of the Rhine and reorganized the bulk of Germany into fewer and larger, solely secular states, confederated in the Rheinbund. After the ...

Robert Blum from Leipzig (Saxony) was a moderate liberal and German nationalist, who believed unifying Germany under French revolution principles was the way out of 19th century misery, which even lead to massive emigration. The revolutionary wave trough Europe in 1948 swept trough most German principalities, allowing liberties and/or elections. Robert was among the first delegates elected throughout Germany for a 'pre-parliament' in Frankfurt am Main, which declared the transformed German League a republic. The Prussian refusal to repulse a Danish invasion from ...

Squire Otto von Bismark, the diplomatically brilliant Ministerpräsident (chief minister) of far less astute, often unwilling Prussian king Wilhelm, survived an attempt on his life and conceived a cunning strategy to unite Germany, some thirty independent monarchies since the Napoleonic era, under Prussia's Hohenzollern dynasty. First a war against Austria, the imperial Habsburg rival for predominance in the former Holy Roman Empire, allowed uniting the Northern League states. Soon after, he and the proud French emperor Napoleon III headed for a Franco-German war, in ...

German emperor Wilhelm (William) II dreams of a colonial empire rivaling the other great European powers' overseas territories, but is simply too late. Still he and his government manage to build a fast-growing, modern, rich homeland with a strong army and a rising navy. His and French emperor Napoleon III's vanity play a part, like Bismarck's system of balancing alliances, in the outbreak of the Great War, the first nightmare worthy to be called a 'world war', ignited in the Balkanic powder keg by his Austrian major ally's escalating conflicting with Serbia and its ...