The tragedies that befell Germany over the last eighty years can be seen as the product of the failures of two ideologies -- fascism and communism -- to deal with the problems associated with two of the signal conditions of modern Western industrial democracies: ethnic diversity and economic class divisions. Reunification gives Germans an opportunity to build a 21st century industrial democracy that learns the lessons of those ideological failures. While it is far too early to determine whether German has successfully addressed the problem of how to preserve democracy in an industrial (or even post-industrial) capitalist economy, it is also far too early to conclude that reunification is a failure. Reunification may be a failure to have recaptured an imagined past, but it is not a failure in the...
Even after unification, Germany retains its chance to stand as a model of a modern capitalist democracy. In that respect, unification has been a qualified success.
German unification occupies a significant place in the history of this great European power. Otto Von Bismarck, once the prime minister of Prussia, is responsible for single-handedly engineering this unification through clever strategies and creative tactics. The paper sheds light on the role of this German Chancellor in the unification of Germany. ROLE OF BISMARCK IN GERMAN UNIFICATION Germany has seen and experienced more than its fair share of troubles, wars and
Italian Unification Process Compared to German Unification Throughout the course of history, Italy and Germany were often considered to be pawns of the major European powers. This is because both regions were effectively divided into a series of city states. Each one had spheres of influence that impacted who were the most dominant. At the same time, countries such as: Britain, France, Spain and Austria Hungary were aggressively controlling territory inside
Gold and Iron Columbia historian Fritz Stern gathered thousands of previously unpublished documents, letters, and correspondences between the two foremost shapers of German unification, Otto von Bismarck and Gerson von Bleichrder. Most readers will be familiar with the former figure: Bismarck, new Germany's first leader and molder of political realities in nineteenth-century Europe. However, fewer will recognize the name of the latter. Gerson von Bleichrder, Jewish banker and unofficial confidant of
After unification, Germany's trade surplus shrank for several years, yet West Germany had shown a dramatically high trade surplus during the late 1980's and into the early 1990's, reaching almost $80 billion U.S. dollars in 1988; by 1991, a united Germany showed a much lower surplus. As of 1999, exports reached $610 billion, made up of machinery, vehicles, chemicals, metals, foodstuffs and textiles. Germany's main exporting partners, as of
" This German form of mercantilism has been labeled as called "predatory" by other European economists and officials. Thus Germany bears some of the burden for the decimation of Greece's economy, and that of other European states, to begin with. During its bailout of Greece, Germans banks do not have to incur any costs. In fact, German banks are buying high-interest bonds that are effectively guaranteed by the euro-zone governments. The
Beer is as synonymous with German culture as watches are to Switzerland. The centrality of beer to German culture is owing to centuries of tradition, long before the unification of Germany in 1871. Although beer consumption in Germany has declined over the last several decades, beer continues to be a defining feature of modern German economic, social, and even political life. Background and Pre-Modern German Beer According to the German Beer Institute,
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