Federal Republic of Germany

E

Religion

Religion in Germany plays a fairly small role in society. Church attendance in Germany is much lower than that in the United States. Under German law, all churches are supported by a modest church tax that is collected by the state.

Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion in medieval Germany until the major crises and reformation efforts of the 14th and 15th centuries. After that time, Protestant churches came to power in the majority of principalities of the north, east, and center of the Holy Roman Empire. The actual Reformation began with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses of protest by Martin Luther in 1517. After considerable religious and political conflict, the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 decreed that each ruler of the approximately 300 German principalities could determine the religion of the subjects. The Catholics eventually met the rapid spread of Protestantism with the Counter Reformation, which involved internal church reforms and a stricter interpretation of church doctrine. Religious strife finally culminated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which devastated the country.

Roman Catholics and Protestants each account for slightly more than a third of the German population. Roman Catholics are mainly concentrated in the south. Protestants, the great majority of whom are Lutherans (see Lutheranism), live primarily in the north. Several German Protestant churches form a loosely organized federation called the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Muslims (see Islam) make up a small percentage of the population.

Only a very small percentage of Germans are Jewish (See also Judaism). Until the 19th century, the Jewish community was segregated and barred from many activities in most German states. In 19th-century Prussia and with the unification of Germany in 1871, German Jews were granted equal status under the law. At that point, German Jews became integrated into cultural and economic life. More than 500,000 Jews lived in Germany in the early 1930s. By the end of World War II in 1945, most of them had been killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust or had fled the country. By 1970 only about 33,000 Jews lived in Germany. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall, tens of thousands of East European and Russian Jews began to settle in the larger cities of Germany, particularly Berlin. Today, due to in part to an immigration policy that generally grants visas to Jews from formerly Communist states, Germany is home to one of the fastest-growing Jewish populations in Europe, now numbering more than 200,000, according to the German government. However, many of the Jews from Eastern Europe no longer practice their religion.

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F

Education

Full-time school attendance in Germany is free and mandatory from age 6 to age 14, after which most children either continue in secondary schools or participate in vocational education until the age of 18. Kindergarten is not part of the public school system, although before unification East Germany had a nearly universal system of childcare facilities. Under the treaty of unification, the East German public education system was required to conform to the model in use in West Germany.

Education in Germany is under the jurisdiction of the individual state governments, which results in a great deal of variation. Most states in the former West Germany have a three-track system that begins with four years of Grundschule (primary school), attended by all children between the ages of 6 and 9. After this period, a child’s further educational program is determined during two “orientation grades” (ages 10 and 11). Those who are university-bound then enter a track of rigorous preparatory secondary education by attending a highly competitive, academic Gymnasium (junior and senior high school). Many Gymnasium students leave school at age 16 to pursue business careers. Others graduate at age 19 after passing a week-long examination called the Abitur. If they pass, they receive a certificate, which is a prerequisite for entering a university. The Gymnasium has three alternative focuses: Greek and Latin, modern languages, and mathematics and science. Only about one-tenth of German students graduate from the Gymnasium.

The overwhelming majority of German students attend either a six-year Realschule (postprimary school), which offers a mixture of business and academic training, or a five-year Hauptschule (general school) followed by further skills training and on-the-job experience in a three-year vocational program, or Berufsschule. From age 14 nearly all Realschule and Hauptschule students, both male and female, enroll in trade apprenticeship programs, which combine training in workshops, factories, or businesses with vocational schooling. Apprentices are supervised by a trade master and must demonstrate their mastery of the trade in examinations.

Since the German three-track system has often been accused of conforming to class distinctions, some states have opted instead for a comprehensive high school system that combines all the tracks within the same institution. The result is somewhat similar to an American high school, but far more competitive. Before unification, East Germany’s polytechnic high schools also provided a comprehensive program. Since 1990, East German education has moved in the direction of West German models.

The Abitur is required for university entrance but there are alternative routes to it. Some students are permitted to change from one kind of school to another during the course of their education. Such midcourse changes are easiest at comprehensive high schools. Those who opt for three years of vocational training after tenth grade can also go on to specialized trade colleges, or Fachhochschulen. Schools of continuing education for adults, such as the many Volkshochschulen (German for “people’s colleges”), offer a variety of adult education courses and have some programs leading to diplomas.

Enrollments at German universities have quadrupled since the 1960s, which has caused the expansion of many old universities and the building of a number of new ones. Germany has quite a few venerable old universities, such as those of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Munich, Tübingen, and Marburg.

IV

Culture

The German people have made many noteworthy cultural contributions. However, the antecedents of contemporary German art, music, and literature are so thoroughly embedded in the broader European intellectual traditions as to defy most attempts to separate any specifically German cultural roots. A visitor, for example, can see abundant evidence of early medieval art and architecture in the many splendid cathedrals, monasteries, and castles of Germany, but these follow the same styles and style periods that are be found in other European countries—Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroque, and so on. German literature and music were similarly part of the larger European culture.

A

Literature

From the beginnings of Germany in the 9th century through the Middle Ages, classical Latin was the language of literature and theology in the country. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a vernacular literature appeared, particularly of heroic epics told by wandering minstrel poets. Gottfried von Strassburg wrote Tristan und Isolt (1210) and Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival (about 1210), both of which dealt with Christian themes from the French Arthurian cycle. The two most important epics of the Middle Ages, the Nibelungenlied (about 1200-1210) and the Gudrunlied (about 1210), are based on pagan Germanic traditions.

Two important events—the construction of a printing press using movable type around 1450 by German printer Johannes Gutenberg and the translation of the Bible into German in 1521 by religious reformer Martin Luther—had a profound impact on Western culture as a whole. They also opened new possibilities for a specifically German literature, because they founded a uniform High German language above the regional dialects, and made it accessible to all who could read. Religious unrest and the Thirty Years’ War put an end to most German literary efforts until a revival occurred in the 18th century.

One of the first writers to stand out beyond Germany was 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, whose play Nathan the Wise (1779; translated 1781) argued for religious toleration. Philosopher and literary critic Johann Gottfried von Herder was an important contemporary of Lessing. The revival of German literature was marked by two great literary movements, classicism and romanticism, which were united in the works of Germany’s greatest poets, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The lyrical poetry and novels of Goethe and his drama Faust (1808-1832; translated 1834) and the plays and poems of Schiller brought together classical form and the romantic emotions that marked much of the literature to come. The great inspiration for this golden age of German literature was classical antiquity, which was considered admirable for its balance and perfection. The romantics, on the other hand, often used German folk materials, such as medieval history and the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers. Ancient Greek poetry inspired the romantic poems of Friedrich Hölderlin. The brothers August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Friedrich von Schlegel edited Athenaeum, which was the chief journal of the romantic movement, translated Shakespeare, and produced literary works based on classical antiquity.

In the mid-1800s the new literary schools of naturalism and symbolism developed. Naturalism regarded human behavior as controlled by instinct, social and economic conditions, and biological factors; it rejected free will. Naturalist playwright Gerhart Hauptmann explored hereditary factors that shaped the individual, while the work of symbolist poet Rainer Maria Rilke was marked by mystic lyricism and imagery. Austrian playwright and poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal created aesthetic moods. Great German novelists of the early 1900s include Thomas Mann, author of The Magic Mountain (1924; translated 1927) and other famous novels, and Alfred Döblin, who is best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929; translated 1931). The most influential expressionist writer was Franz Kafka, whose novels and short stories present a world of oppression and despair.

Social criticism was also a common theme in the early 1900s; it provided the primary focus for the novelist Robert Musil and the playwrights Arthur Schnitzler and Frank Wedekind. In 1929 Erich Maria Remarque published the antiwar novel Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), with grimly realistic portraits of World War I. Writers like Hermann Hesse, author of Siddhartha (1922; translated 1951), drew on Indian philosophy and religion. The narrative epic theater of see Bertolt Brecht during the 1920s in Berlin specifically attacked capitalist, bourgeois society. German writing, like many German arts, suffered when the Nazi Party (see National Socialism) took control of Germany in 1933; led by Thomas Mann, many creative minds fled the country and went into exile.

After World War II a new generation of German writers, which called itself Group 47, examined themes of overcoming the Nazi experience. Novelists Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Uwe Johnson led this group. Playwrights Peter Weiss and Peter Handke and poets Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan made important contributions to German literature in the late 20th century.

B

Art and Architecture

Medieval German art and architecture were embedded in the dominant European styles of the time. No monumental painting or sculpture, however, has survived from the earliest period except the 9th-century Carolingian cathedral at Aachen, one of the most important circular buildings in Europe.

The cathedrals of Hildesheim and Magdeburg, the illuminated manuscripts, the sculpture, and the church paintings of the 10th century reflect the spirituality of Byzantine art and architecture. The 11th- and 12th-century cathedrals of Speyer, Goslar, Mainz, and Worms are outstanding examples of the Romanesque style, with rounded arches and dark interiors. The cathedrals of Strasbourg, Trier, and Cologne are fine samples of the Gothic style and its soaring pillars, pointed arches, and flying buttresses. In the 14th century a family of architects and artists, the Parlers, helped spread Gothic designs and sculpture throughout southern Germany, from Ulm to Nürnberg and Prague. During the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, the great German artist Albrecht Dürer created extraordinary woodcuts and copper engravings and pioneered ways of reproducing and disseminating art. Other well-known artists of the time include the painters Matthias Grünewald, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger, and the superb wood altars and sculptures of Tilman Riemenschneider.

Another style, the opulently ornamented baroque, flourished in the Catholic churches and monasteries and the secular palaces of southern Germany and Austria during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its rich ornamentation accompanied the renewed style of the Catholic church service of the Counter Reformation, which was a reaction to the Protestant preference for stripping churches of statuary and paintings of saints. Andreas Schlüter designed the Royal Palace in Berlin in 1706, and architect Balthasar Neumann built the Bishop’s Residence in Würzburg with a great stair hall and a reception room decorated with ceiling paintings.

Outstanding examples of late baroque, or rococo style, include the Wies Church near Munich in southern Bavaria, a vision of light and lightness built by Dominikus Zimmermann, the Benedictine Abbey of Melk on the Danube, and the Royal Zwinger Palace in Dresden, a creation of Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann. Rococo is distinguished by its fanciful use of curves and light, its flowing asymmetric lines, and its pierced shellwork. In the 19th century, great architects such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed many of the representative buildings in Berlin, and Gottfried Semper pioneered the revival of Renaissance styles in Dresden and Vienna. Artists of the German romantic period include Caspar David Friedrich, who painted meditative landscapes and seascapes, and Carl Spitzweg, who provided humorous glimpses of small-town life.

At the beginning of the 20th century, German art and architecture developed a range of new styles, beginning with the Jugendstil (see Art Nouveau), whose rich and colorful ornamentation and graceful curves left an indelible imprint on the rest of the century. The Bauhaus school of design, under the direction first of Walter Gropius and later of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, pioneered a functional, severely simple architectural style during the years of the Weimar Republic. The Bauhaus also attracted great abstract painters such as Paul Klee and artists from other countries, including Wassily Kandinsky of Russia and American Lyonel Feininger. In addition, the early 1900s produced the bitter caricatures of George Grosz, the tragic graphic art of Käthe Kollwitz, and the expressionist art of groups such as Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Among the leading expressionists were painters Max Beckmann, who produced highly dramatic and energetic paintings, and Emil Nolde, who used contorted brushwork and raw colors to visually shock the viewer. The Nazis pilloried their work as “degenerate art.” As with German literature, nearly every leading figure in art and architecture fled Germany during the Nazi years, and only a few returned after 1945. In postwar Germany, artists of note include sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys and painter Anselm Kiefer, who explored themes of the German cultural crisis under dictatorship and total war.

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