Germany

(Click to enlarge)

Germany

(Mapping Specialists, Ltd.)

A country of north-central Europe. Occupied since c. 500 B.C. by Germanic tribes, the region became part of the Frankish empire by the sixth century A.D. Later it became a loose federation of principalities and the nucleus of the Holy Roman Empire until the imperial state was broken up by Napoleon in 1806. Germany became a confederation after 1815 and then an empire centered around Prussia (1871-1918). Following its defeat in World War I, it was reorganized as the Weimar Republic, which collapsed when Adolf Hitler rose to power and formed the Third Reich. Germany's defeat in 1945 at the end of World War II resulted in its division into four occupation zones, each controlled by an Allied power. Out of the U.S., French, and British zones West Germany was established in 1949, while the Soviet zone became East Germany. The two Germanies were reunified in 1990 after the fall of the East German Communist government. Berlin is the capital and largest city. Population: 82,400,000.

 

For more information on Germany, visit Britannica.com.

The older literature tended to depict Germany—i.e. the territories eventually forming the German Empire in 1871—  as one of the cradles of early photography. Probably early in 1839, in fact, the Munich scientists Franz von Kobell (1803-82) and Carl August von Steinheil succeeded in making paper negatives of local sights, and Steinheil revealed the details of their process to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences on 13 April. However, they were not independent of events in France and England, and it was the techniques developed there that soon came to dominate photography's development in Germany.

Early history

As in other countries, it was the daguerreotype which attracted most attention in larger German towns and the press from August 1839. Already that year, daguerreotypes were exhibited for sale, in Hamburg by the optician and instrument maker Rudolf Koppel, and in Berlin by the art dealer Louis Sachse and the optician Theodor Dörffel. Other cities such as Munich, Cologne, Dresden, and Leipzig followed almost immediately. Brochures with descriptions of Daguerre's process were circulating in Germany by the late summer of 1839. Opticians, booksellers, picture dealers, and pharmacists saw photography as a both fascinating and marketable product that could be sold at high prices—sometimes equivalent to a workman's monthly pay. When portraiture became feasible in 1841, the medium's commercial exploitation really began. Daguerreotypists travelled from town to town offering their services: for example, the Swiss-born Johann Baptist Isenring in south Germany, or the Weninger brothers from Vienna in the north. At the same time, 1841-2, the first studios were started in Hamburg (Hermann Biow) and Berlin (J. C. Schall). Recognized both by contemporaries and later critics were, among others, the pioneers Carl Ferdinand Stelzner, Joseph Albert, Franz Hanfstaengl, and Hermann Krone. Specialist periodicals began appearing in the mid-1850s, such as the Prague-based Photographisches Journal (1854-65), then the Photographisches Archiv (1860-97) in Elberfeld and the Photographische Mitteilungen founded by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel in 1864.

The rapidly developing commercial sector was dominated by small businesses, mostly studios with one or two employees. The occupational statistics published under the empire showed 4, 574 people working in photography in 1875, 6, 364 in 1882, as many as 11, 851 in 1895, and 19, 406 in 1907. The percentage of women rose from 7.5 per cent in 1875 to 18.7 per cent in 1907. Although many did processing or finishing jobs in factory-like conditions, a growing number had important front-of-house jobs in studios or, as with the successful Elvira Studio in Munich, ran their own. The Berlin Lette-Verein's excellent women's photography school, founded in 1890, expanded rapidly. The state-subsidized Munich Photography School, founded in 1900, opened its doors to women in 1905.

Camera and equipment manufacture became an important industry. A sizeable infrastructure developed, from which firms like Zeiss, Voigtländer, and Agfa emerged. Eventually the German photographic industry, concentrated especially around Berlin and Dresden, became the largest in Europe. German firms also led the field in related branches like album manufacture and, from the turn of the century, postcard production.

From 1839 until the early 1850s, the daguerreotype was the dominant process, but was then rapidly supplanted by the wet-plate process, which remained dominant into the 1870s. It was then replaced by the gelatin dry-plate process. Although roll-film appeared with the arrival of Kodak cameras at the end of the 1880s, it was not used by professionals until the First World War.

If portraiture was the backbone of commercial photography, it should not be forgotten that the reproduction of works of art (painting, sculpture, and prints), as well as landscape, topographical, architectural, and documentary work was also done by many firms. It is problematical to treat these branches of photography purely in aesthetic terms, or divorced from trends in the fine arts or from practice in other countries. In Germany, as elsewhere, the question of whether photography was an art was discussed. But attempts to formulate the medium's autonomous aesthetic capability in radical terms were rare before the rise of pictorialist ‘art photography’ (Kunstfotografie) in the late 1880s and early 1890s. In visual terms, professional photographers tended to rely on current fine-art conventions, while using the latest technical innovations, such as retouching of negatives and prints, hand colouring, the use of electric light in studios, stereo photography, and new developing and copying techniques; also new formats as they appeared (cartes de visite from c.1860, cabinet prints from the 1870s).

1880-1918

In the last quarter of the 19th century, as photography became increasingly widespread even among the lower middle class, and as important changes occurred in the visual arts, commercial photography came in for increasing criticism. It came mainly from middle-class amateurs, who found much to find fault with, primarily with professional portraiture, but to a degree also with view photography. They not only rejected excessive retouching, unnatural poses, and the whole studio mise-en-scène, but also the ubiquitous albumen print with its hard, shiny surface. From the late 1880s, amateurs founded societies to promote their interests and propagate their ideas, partly by means of regular public exhibitions intended to influence photographic practice generally. One of the most important was the Society for the Encouragement of Amateur Photography (Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Amateurfotografie) founded (initially under a different name) in Hamburg in 1891, and supported by the director of the Kunsthalle, Alfred Lichtwark. The issues were debated above all in newly founded journals like the Photographische Rundschau, the Photographische Correspondenz, and the Atelier des Photographen.

In fact, pictorialist art photography's influence on professional photography was considerable. For portraitists such as Rudolph Dührkoop, Nicola Perscheid, or Hugo Erfurth, it was decisive. Their portraits seemed more atmospheric, more natural, and, to a degree, more private—at all events, their poses, lighting, and printing methods were much more varied and individual than in run-of-the-mill studio work. Some branches of landscape and architectural photography also retreated from the conventional nicely composed long shot and tourist-orientated view. Details and light effects became the centre of aesthetic interest, and—for example in the work of the Hofmeister brothers—the toning and surface texture of the final print. Numerous exhibitions in major German cities, many with international participation, emphasized the movement's importance. By the 1900s, however, the impact of art photography and the debates surrounding it was diminishing markedly, even though the pictorialist style remained dominant. There was a shift towards a more objective or ‘factual’ (sachlich) photography, linked with Erfurth but also with August Sander, who made preliminary pictures for the great project he was to undertake in the 1920s in the years before the First World War.

In the shadow of the debates surrounding art photography, the development of the medium in aesthetically more neutral fields such as science, technology, journalism, documentation, or the purely private sphere went on apace. At the end of the 19th century a new market for photography emerged in the illustrated press. Although photographs by Ottomar Anschütz had been reproduced by the autotype process in the Leipzig Illustrirte Zeitung as early as 1883, it was not until the late 1890s that photographs reproduced in this way appeared regularly in journals and newspapers. The largest-circulation illustrated papers were Ullstein's Berliner illustrirte Zeitung (1891) and Scherl's Woche (1899). Berlin became a centre for press photographers, and alongside existing picture agencies, specialized photo agencies such as Zander & Labisch (1895) appeared.

The First World War led to a remarkable spread of amateur photography. Many soldiers took cameras with them and, official prohibitions notwithstanding, documented their daily lives. Not until 1916, when it established the Picture and Film Bureau (Bild- und Filmamt; BUFA), did the government make systematic use of photographs as propaganda. However, the war's photographic legacy was much more strongly shaped by amateur pictures, mostly taken in rear areas far from the front line.

— Jens Jaeger

Bibliography

• Peters, U., Stilgeschichte der Fotografie in Deutschland 1839-1900 (1979).
• Baier, W., Quellendarstellungen zur Geschichte der Fotografie (1980).
• Kaufhold, E., Bilder des Übergangs: Zur Mediengeschichte von Fotografie und Malerei in Deutschland um 1900 (1986).
• Dewitz, B. v., and Matz, R., Silber und Salz: Zur Frühzeit der Photographie im deutschen Sprachraum 1839-1860 (1989).
• Honnef, K., Sachsse, R., and Thomas, K. (eds.), German Photography, 1870-1970: Power of a Medium (1997).
• Pohlmann, U., and Scheutle, R. (eds.), Lehrjahre, Lichtjahre: Die Münchner Fotoschule 1900-2000 (2000)

The period 1918-45 was one of headlong technical, aesthetic, and organizational change. However, although the process was both far reaching and conspicuous, it was partly rooted in the pre-war years, and still far from complete long after 1945. There were major changes above all in modes of seeing, and in ideas about what photography was and what its tasks should be. Particularly notable between 1918 and 1945 were links between theoretical debate (Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, László Moholy-Nagy, et al.), the proliferation of aesthetic viewpoints, and the growing importance of the medium in culture, politics, and economic life. On the other hand, the enormous range and experimental vitality of artistic and journalistic photography tends to obscure the fact that less spectacular developments like changes in photographic retailing and manufacture, and the vast expansion of amateur photography, were no less characteristic of the period. Older aesthetic traditions also persisted in practically every field. Photographers like Hugo Erfurth and Franz Grainer who were already well known before the war further consolidated their success.

1918-1933

In the photographic industry the growth trend of previous decades resumed soon after the end of the war. A new professional body, the Society of German Photographers (Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner; GDL), was founded in 1919. In 1925 the numbers officially employed in photography were 15, 673 (including 4, 118 women, or 26.3 per cent). In 1933 the figure was 22, 032, and at the last pre-war count, in 1939, 23, 435 (including 9, 980 women, or 42.6 per cent). The structure of the business remained practically unchanged. Most enterprises were small, with fewer than five employees. But conditions were different on the manufacturing and chemical side, where a strong trend towards concentration developed; and Agfa, Kodak (Germany), and Zeiss-Ikon (founded in 1926) were among the biggest firms. The amateur market became increasingly important, as photography became ever more widely accessible and more workers took it up. (In 1931 workers' photography clubs had c.2, 400 members.)

Technical development favoured the spread of the medium. The industry moved towards smaller, better-specified cameras, with Leitz's Leica, available since 1925, at the peak. Film gradually replaced glass plates, and the almost simultaneous introduction of colour film by Kodak and Agfa from 1936 was of major importance.

It is virtually impossible to list all the most significant trends and personalities in photography in this period. Both photojournalism and photographically illustrated publications had received an enormous boost from the war. Existing illustrated papers were joined by new ones, and circulations rose. The Berliner illustrirte Zeitung reached its peak in 1929 with 1.8 million copies. New creations in the 1920s included the ünchener illustrierte Presse, the Nazi Illustrierter Beobachter, and the Communist Arbeiter illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ), as well as newspaper supplements and a wide range of magazines. New photo agencies were founded, such as Dephot in Berlin (1928). Well-known press photographers of the 1920s and 1930s included the sports specialist Martin Munkácsi, Erich Salomon, Tim Gidal, Felix H. Man, Paul Wolff, and Umbo (Otto Umbehr). Though several had to emigrate after 1933, they continued to work for the press in France, England, or the USA. Only a small proportion of photojournalists had attended a photographic school: for example, the Halle-Burg Giebichstein Design School, the Folkwang School in Essen, the Stuttgart Design School, or older institutions such as the Bavarian State Photographic School. A separate photographic section—under Walter Peterhans— was not established at the Bauhaus until 1929. Nevertheless, there was considerable cross-fertilization between theory and practice. Thus the photomontage developed by John Heartfield with the Dada group became a much-used cover-page device for the AIZ.

Particularly significant for the aesthetics of photography were, on the one hand, the ‘objective’ image (Neue Sachlichkeit—New Objectivity) and, on the other, experimental photography (Neues Sehen—New Vision), including cameraless pictures. Objectivity was exemplified by the work of Albert Renger-Patzsch, whose industrial photographs and landscapes were highly influential. His book The World is Beautiful (Die Welt ist schön, 1929) was a major success. Karl Blossfeldt's macrophotographs of plants emphasized form and structure by isolating the subject. Helmar Lerski and Erna Lendvai-Dircksen adopted a comparable approach with their portraits, which concentrated on the face. August Sander's series of full-length portraits of people of all ages and classes in their surroundings caused a considerable stir when the first images appeared in 1929. Examples of experimental photography were the collages and photograms of Hanna Hoech, Moholy-Nagy, and Raoul Hausmann.In 1929 both the Film und Foto (FiFo) exhibition in Stuttgart, organized by Franz Roh, and Werner Gräff's book Here Comes the New Photographer! (Es kommt der neue Fotograf!) offered an overview of 1920s photography in all its formal variants. The development of both artistic and applied photography (also beyond 1933) can be followed more broadly in annuals like The German Photograph (Das deutsche Lichtbild; 1927-38 and 1955-79) and German Camera-Almanach (Deutscher Camera-Almanach; 1905-41).

1933-1945

In formal and stylistic terms, there was little immediate change after the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933. But theoretical debate soon ceased, and by 1938 many leading photographers and writers had been banned from working or forced to emigrate. Only the politically and racially ‘sound’ could belong to the regime's principal control mechanism, the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer). In other ways, too, the totalitarian impulse worked its way through the system. Formally and technically, German photojournalism maintained the standards set during the Weimar Republic, and remained as ‘modern’ as its counterparts in democratic countries abroad. But photo-reportage became a tool of the Propaganda Ministry, which as early as March 1933 had established an ‘Illustrated-Press Department’. All press photography was subject to ministerial control, and photojournalists and picture editors lost any semblance of independence. Tactless or incorrect captions, even ‘inappropriate’ positioning of Hitler in relation to other Nazi leaders, could incur dire penalties. All photo agencies came under the control of the regime except for the American Associated Press, which maintained a degree of autonomy until 1941. The leading figure in German press photography between 1933 and 1945 was Heinrich Hoffmann, whose personal relationship with Hitler since the 1920s dominated Führer- and Party-related photography; and Hoffmann's own firm was Germany's largest picture agency. The photographic press was required to propagate Nazi aesthetic principles. Photography clubs and the League of Amateur Photographers (Amateurfotografenverband, f. 1908) were politically ‘coordinated’.

As in painting, a few niches of freedom survived. Herbert List, for example, was able to pursue his surreal ‘metaphysical’ photography without interference. But other individuals (Paul Wolff, Walter Hege (1893-1955), Hilmar Pabel (1910-2000)) came to terms with the regime, or were more or less forced to work for it. Some exponents of 1920s experimentalism, such as Höch, remained in Germany but were unable to exhibit or publish their work.

During the war, initially, photography was promoted in advertisements and propaganda as a bridge between servicemen and home. From 1943, however, scarcity of materials created increasing problems for private photographers. Official war reporting was under military control, with photographers assigned to propaganda companies (PKs). These were formed in 1938 and first deployed during the occupation of the Sudetenland the same year. PK photographers were well equipped (especially by comparison with their British counterparts), often used colour film, and achieved superb results; casualties were correspondingly high. In 1940 the illustrated weekly Signal was launched as a vehicle for propaganda abroad and many of its leading photographers continued their careers in the new generation of West German magazines that emerged after the war.

Bibliography

• Jens Jaeger
• Mellor, D. (ed.), Germany: The New Photography 1927-33 (1978).
• Fiedler, J., Fotografie am Bauhaus (1990).
• Lugon, O. (ed.), La Photographie en Allemagne: anthologie de textes 1919-39 (1997).
• Sachsse, R., Die Erziehung zum Wegsehen. Fotografie im NS-Staat (2003)

Post-war German photography was initially dominated by ‘ruin photography’, which presented the devastation of German cities as a kind of blanket warning against war, while suppressing issues of responsibility. By contrast, the task of showing Nazi atrocities was fulfilled by Allied photographers (e.g. Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller, Sergei Morosov, George Rodger). The two most celebrated ‘ruin photography’ publications, on Cologne (Hermann Claassen, Gesang im Feuerofen—Song in the Furnace, 1947) and Dresden (Richard Peter Sr., Dresden: Eine Kamera klagt an—Dresden: A Camera's Testimony, 1949) already showed the beginnings of reconstruction. With the start of the Cold War, the ideological confrontation between the two German states was also reflected in photography, with the two ‘scenes’ developing in different directions. But, while the history of West German photography is well documented, material on the East is scarce.

West Germany to 1990

In the West, the photographic industry rapidly reorganized itself, dominated by Agfa, now based in Leverkusen. Both art photography and the amateur market expanded steadily. A major stimulus was the biennial Cologne Photokina show, inaugurated in 1950: the world's largest photographic trade fair but also, largely thanks to L. Fritz Gruber, a photography festival of increasing cultural importance. The German Photographic Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie; DGfP), founded in Cologne in 1951, was a photographers' organization attuned to Germany's changing economic conditions. The Society of German Photographers (Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner; GDL), in existence since 1919, had reorganized itself in the late 1940s, but did not come to terms with its past until the 1980s and 1990s, by which time it had become marginal. In 1987 it renamed itself the German Photographic Academy (DFA).

In the field of photojournalism and the press, Berlin had forfeited its leadership after the war. The Americans in particular were anxious to foster a full range of magazines in Germany. But after the 1949 currency reform, journals started by the Allies (for example Heute, launched in the summer of 1945) became hard to sell, and withered over the next few years. There was increasing competition from new German magazines like the Munich Revue, the Cologne Neue illustrierte, and the Hamburg Kristall, which had appeared in 1946. In 1948 came Stern, Constanze, and Quick. With these magazines, following the example of Life, photography was the core element, claiming to be a universal medium of communication. The annual Das deutsche Lichtbild reappeared—also in an English-language edition—in 1954 (until 1979), its editors Wolf Strache (b. 1910) and later Otto Steinert hoping to restore German art photography's international profile.

The art photography of the 1950s harked back to certain tendencies of the 1920s and developed in the ambit of non-representational, abstract work; solarization, photomontage, photograms, negative prints, and other experimental techniques were revived. Trend setting in West Germany was the fotoform group (f. 1949) with its programme, strongly influenced by Steinert, of ‘subjective photography’. But if most ‘high’ 1950s art photographs were in monochrome, colour was becoming increasingly important. At first it was confined to luxuriously got-up fashion and advertising imagery. But by the late 1950s many German photographers—for example, Peter Cornelius, Walter Boje (1905-92), Erwin Fieger (b. 1928)—were experimenting with colour's aesthetic possibilities. Above all, however, amateurs were taking to it. By the end of the 1960s, colour film usage had outstripped that of black-and-white. (Around this time amateurs were also strongly influenced by Karl Pawek's vision—in the wake of the Family of Man exhibition—of photography as a universal language, and especially by three celebrated ‘world exhibitions’ he organized in 1964, 1968, and 1973.)

In the emerging art of the 1960s, photography was increasingly discovered by ‘fine’ artists, although a certain distance persisted between the fine-art and photography scenes. Under the banner of ‘generative photography’, a group that included Gottfried Jäger, Manfred Kage, and Kilian Breier presented the photographic process as an analytical, step-by-step ‘generative’ system—an approach that tended to result in abstract compositions, often serially organized.

The 1970s saw the rise of so-called ‘authorial photography’ (Autorenphotographie), partly conditioned by a crisis in conventional magazine photojournalism. It was a movement of independent photographers who dedicated themselves to self-selected—and in some cases very long-term—projects that deliberately eschewed any kind of commercial use.

Since the 1970s, photography in Germany, as elsewhere, has embraced a multitude of ideas and tendencies. The proliferating technical options created by new cameras, lenses, and other equipment have encouraged this. In both the amateur and commercial sectors, colour has almost completely supplanted monochrome. Since the 1980s, electronic imaging has increasingly dominated product design, advertising, and photojournalism. This has transformed the relationship between reality, simulation, and fiction, with implications for society's collective visual memory, and for the formation of a supposedly objective public opinion. In the 1990s the truthfulness and authenticity so long naively ascribed to photography were increasingly overshadowed by individual visual worlds and subjective interpretations of reality. The process was accelerated by the spread of digital image capture and manipulation.

East Germany

Reunification in 1990 focused renewed attention on the East German photographic scene. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) had inherited both a mature photographic culture and a sizeable portion of what was left of pre-1945 Germany's world-class photographic industry. VEB-Pentacon, for example, a combine formed in 1964 from several Dresden camera manufacturers, exported robust products like the Praktica single-lens reflex. But ultimately state subsidies were no substitute for the design sophistication and non-stop innovation achieved abroad, especially in Japan. Work in the official media (and in science and industry, with more arcane specialisms in the Stasi and military) was safe but dull, supplying official newspapers like Neues Deutschland with endless images of victorious athletes and optimistic-looking workers, dark-suited communist functionaries and fraternal delegations. Pollution, vandalism, infrastructural decay, escape attempts, and the Wall were taboo. At the same time, although a network of amateur clubs and journals existed, openings for art photographers were limited. By the 1980s a kind of passive opposition was expressing itself in documentation of the grimmer aspects of GDR life. Sad nudes and desolate, poisoned-looking landscapes abounded. But it is premature, given the patchy information available, to write off the history of East German photography as an inevitable dead end. In particular, the role of private photography in the GDR's totalitarian society deserves to be investigated.

Since 1990 The German photographic world at the beginning of the 21st century is multifaceted, partly because of the historically and politically conditioned federal structure of German cultural institutions. German photography is exhibited worldwide, and successful in the market place. Members of the so-called ‘Düsseldorf School’ are particularly highly valued. Many talents have been shaped by the teaching of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Academy. Their best-known students include Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, and Thomas Struth, who have developed in individually distinctive ways within the tradition represented by their teachers; and who, above all, use colour as an indispensable means of expression. In addition to Düsseldorf, many other colleges and academies are notable. The most important photographic collections are also widely distributed: in Hamburg, Munich, Essen, Cologne, Berlin, and Dresden.

Photographers' changing conditions of work were reflected as early as 1969 in the founding of the League of Independent Photo-Designers (Bund Freier Fotodesigner; BFF). In response to the rapid transformation of photojournalism at the end of the 20th century another body, Freelens, was formed in Hamburg in 1995. With c. 1, 400 members it is the largest German photographers' organization, and in particular endeavours to safeguard photographers' creative property rights: an increasingly important task.Ulrich Rüter/Robin Lenman

Featured article: Inner-German Border Photography 1952-1989.

As it did elsewhere in Europe, ballet in Germany began at court. One of the earliest examples is Darmstadt's Die Befreiung des Friedens (The Liberation of Peace) in 1600, which was in effect a ‘sung ballet’. In 1717 in Leipzig, Gottfried Taubert published his Der rechtschaffene Tantzmeister, the first important German dance treatise. Stuttgart was put on the ballet map when Noverre worked there from 1760 to 1767, developing his controversial reforms while acting as ballet master. Stuttgart also attracted Filippo Taglioni and his daughter Marie, who both worked in the city from 1824 to 1828. There they created Danina, oder Jocko der Brasilianische Affe (1826), one of the most popular ballets of the day. Thirty years later Berlin played host to Paul Taglioni, Marie's brother, when he took charge of the Berlin Court Opera Ballet (1856-83). Regular ballet performances started in Berlin after the First World War at the State Opera (Staatsoper), whose directors included Heinrich Kröller (1921-3) and Rudolf von Laban (1930-4). After the Second World War the company, renamed the German State Opera Ballet (also known as the Staatsoper Ballet), continued in what was now East Berlin. In 1955 the company moved back to its rebuilt house, Unter den Linden, where it is still based. Berlin's second opera house, the Charlottenburg, which opened in 1912 in what became West Berlin, is today the German Opera House, home to the Berlin Opera Ballet.

Modern dance took hold in Germany after visits by Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis in the early 1900s. While interest in classical dance was waning, there was great interest in the new expressive dance, or Ausdruckstanz. In 1911 Jaques-Dalcroze opened his institute for applied rhythm in the Dresden suburb of Hellerau. The leading figures in German modern dance after the First World War were Rudolf von Laban (who had set up his school in Munich in 1910) and Mary Wigman, both of whom ran influential schools. The most significant work to emerge from this period was Kurt Jooss's The Green Table, which was premiered by the Essen Folkwang Ballet in Paris in 1932. The Second World War, and the Nazi regime, put a stop to the development of ballet in the country. In the 1950s ballet in East Germany came under the influence of the Soviet school, with the two main companies in East Berlin taking a lead in the development of Socialist Realism. In West Germany, meanwhile, every opera house had its own ballet company, most of them classically based. From the 1960s onwards, dance in West Germany was strongly influenced by British and American ideas, thanks to the influx of foreign directors and choreographers like John Cranko in Stuttgart, Kenneth MacMillan in Berlin, William Forsythe in Frankfurt, and John Neumeier in Hamburg. In the field of modern dance, Germany's Pina Bausch became a leading international player. Among German ballet companies today, the Stuttgart Ballet and the Frankfurt Ballet are the most internationally recognized for their innovation and excellence. The Bavarian State Ballet is one of the leading regional companies, while the Leipzig Ballet (under Uwe Scholz's direction) symbolizes the rebirth of dance in the former East Germany following the collapse of Communism. In 1999 plans were announced to amalgamate the Berlin Opera Ballet, the German State Opera Ballet (the Staatsoper Ballet), and the Komische Ballet into a single Berlin company which from 2004 was known as Staatsballett Berlin.

Germany where fairy tales were first considered worthy of study, occupies a pre‐eminent position in the genre. When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm decided to collect Germany's traditional tale forms, they laid the basis for the future of the genre in Germany, created a model for content and style, and set a standard for editing that was applied in nations around the world.

1. the genre and its history

Modern fairy tales emerged together with an urban workforce that increasingly consumed print products, and their plots, short and relatively simple, recount the magic fulfilment of their heroines' and heroes' wishes against a backdrop of personal deprivation and hostile opponents. Customary protagonists are poor girls or boys who, with magic assistance, achieve wealth and power and marry royalty. Tales about fairies, on the other hand, deal with the complicated intersections of royal lives with gnomes, elves, kobolds, giants, and fairies. Tales about fairies sometimes conclude tragically, sometimes happily. A third genre, literary fairy tales, share characteristics of both genres, fairy tales and tales about fairies. Their protagonists can be poor girls and boys or royal children; they often include excursions into fairyland; and their plots can be and often are amended by sequentially appended episodes that loop back to the primary plot.

A large and increasingly influential group of scholars propose that fairy tales emerged during the Renaissance from pre‐existing medieval literary forms and motifs. Framed story collections like Boccaccio's Decameron or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales provided a model for the structure adopted by the first authors of fairy tales, the Venetian Giovan Francesco Straparola and the Neapolitan Giambattista Basile. Fairy‐tale motifs, however, derived from widely disparate sources. Oriental tales from the eastern Mediterranean supplied magic rings, magical transport, and magic transformations, while north‐western European Celtic tradition provided fairies. Plot elements sometimes survived from medieval legends, sagas, romances, and adventures to become traditional components of modern fairy tales, such as the giant who helped the king by retrieving a ring thrown into the sea in König Rother (King Rother, c.1150).

Heroic epics provided other elements, such as treasures, dragons, cloaks of invisibility, heroes who had to free heroines from demonic captors and who had to cut out and carry off a dragon's tongue or a giant's head in order to prove themselves the heroic agent. The early 13th‐century verse novella Asinarius detailed another familiar plot in its transformation story of a prince who was an ass during the day and a handsome prince at night, until his royal bride's father stole away his skin and burned it to release him from the evil spell. Another nursery story with ancient lineage is ‘Sleeping Beauty’, first documented in the French medieval romance Perceforest; it was read in France, and in northern Germany was performed as a pre‐Lenten Shrove Tuesday drama in the mid‐1400s.

The earliest printed books and their downmarket successors, chapbooks, were powerful agents in the dissemination of popular narratives in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, when motifs of magic first entered broad German popular awareness. It was then that relatively inexpensive printed booklets of 8, 16, 32, 64, or occasionally 128 pages created a common body of narrative knowledge for large numbers of marginally or semi‐literate people in every European country. Cheap print mediated a set of stories whose parts were as interchangeable as the printed type which delivered them. The stories included Arthurian tales with kings, queens, fairies, dragons, valorous knights and cowering princesses, Siegfried stories, oriental tales, Till Eulenspiegel tales, and stories of long‐suffering girls and women like Genoveva and Griselda. Sold at fairs, they not only provided the broad populace with a common set of story elements and motifs, but also supplied subsequent authors with material for their own creations, adaptations, or pirated reprints.

Translations also played a role in enriching Germany's narrative store, with scattered evidence that some of Straparola's tales were translated into German in the 1500s and again at the end of the 1600s. Two of Straparola's tales, 4.5 (which deals with Life and Death) and 5.2 (which is a true fairy tale of social rise with the help of magic) are documented in Caspar Lolivetta's Das teutsche Gespenst (1687), but no copy of a complete German edition of Straparola's tales survives.

Germany's first ‘Cinderella’‐type fairy tale, ‘Ein schoene geschichte von einer frawen mitt zweyen kindlin’ (‘A Pretty History of a Woman with Two Children’), appeared in the Wegkürtzer of Martin Montanus in 1560. It tells the story of a little girl abandoned in the woods to starve, who is sustained by an ‘Erdkuehlein’, a magic calf. Her wicked stepmother discovers and slaughters it, but the little girl eventually gains wealth and position through its buried bones. In Germany, however, the time was not yet ripe for the modern fairy tale in which a poor protagonist, whether boy or girl, rose socially by means of a marriage mediated by magic. Instead of Cinderella tale types, the most beloved German popular brief narratives in the 1500s were stomach‐filling ones that told of ponds filled with fish grilled and ready for the eating, of roast goose running free, and more importantly, free for the taking. The Land of Cokaigne dreams of most of Germany's common readers in the 1500s and 1600s rose only as high as their often empty bellies: tales about fairies (except for Merlin figures in chapbooks with Arthurian tales) did not exist in Germany in the 1500s or 1600s.

The first quasi‐fairy tale, that is, a series of episodes detailing a social rise with the help of magic, was ‘Bärenhäuter’ (‘Bearskin’). According to the respected German scholar Kurt Ranke, Johann Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen composed it from heterogeneous elements for his prose novel Simplicissimus (1669). The titular character, a cashiered soldier, makes a pact with the devil to gain riches by living in filth until a virtuous and well‐born girl accepts him in that condition; if he fails, the devil will win his soul. When the youngest of a merchant's three daughters does so, her two sisters mock her unmercifully; when Bearskin finally washes and shows himself to be not only rich but also handsome, the sisters hang themselves. The devil loses his wager with Bearskin, but departs satisfied, because he has gained two souls (the sisters') instead of one (Bearskin's).

Another early fairy tale emerged in the 1600s, Johannes Praetorius's ‘Die drei Spinnerinnen’ (‘The Three Spinners’), a now‐familiar folk tale which details the clever manner in which three old women, misshapen from the rigours of spinning, fool a husband into forbidding his young wife ever to spin again, to her immeasurable delight. It typifies the brief narratives available in Germany at the end of the 1600s, as do the contents of Andreas Strobl's Ovum Paschale Novum (New Easter Egg) of 1694, which listed 100 popular tales that priests might want to tell as part of their Easter sermons: 36 fables, 1 legend, and 63 comic tales, most of which dealt, like ‘The Three Spinners’, with the battle of the sexes.

Fairies, ghosts, knights, and magic arrived in Germany with steadily increasing amounts of leisure for middle‐ and upper middle‐class women in the Age of Enlightenment. For most of the 1700s, fairies and fairy tales in Germany were correspondingly restricted to the reading matter of Germany's middle, upper‐middle, and upper classes. They were an integral part of the new kinds of reading matter that emerged for a new, often female, reading public with moderate amounts of leisure time. The stories were fashionably French in origin, in a country whose nobility and upper classes spoke and read French. Easily read in part of a morning or afternoon, the stories, stylistically pre‐romantic, had some literary merit.

Fairies and fairy tales evoked a broad spectrum of response from their 18th‐century readers and critics. In German‐speaking Switzerland, Johann Jacob Bodmer justified the use of fairies and spirits of woods, air, and water as agents to awaken the imagination. In contrast, the highly regarded German literary theorist Johann Christoph Gottsched inveighed against all fables and stories except those that taught a moral lesson. Christian Wilhelm Diederichs recommended magic and fairies as a modern‐day manifestation of the kind of tales that animated the Old and New Testaments (1791). Johann Gottfried Herder attributed tales to folk belief and imagination, and theoretically divorced printed French tales from ‘orally transmitted German folk fairy tales’ when he developed a theory of ‘Volkspoesie’ (folk poetry). His conception of folk poetry was subsequently understood in terms of anonymous folk authorship of fairy tales, and later, when growing nationalism had reshaped thinking about the folk in the 19th‐century, this diffuse notion was transformed into the idea of national folk memory.

Despite 18th‐ and 19th‐century theorizing, documentary evidence demonstrates that fairies and fairy tales did not arise from German tradition, but moved laterally to Germany from France. From the mid‐1700s onward, one French fairy tale after another was translated into German, sometimes word‐for‐word, and sometimes reworked to suit conditions, tastes, and habits east of the Rhine. At roughly the same time (1755), the first German‐language literary fairy tale appeared in a collection of satires by Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener, which began with a story about fairies. A decade later, Christoph Martin Wieland introduced fairies and fantasy in his satirical adventures of Don Sylvio of Rosalva (1764).

In the latter half of the 1700s, magic grew in importance. For a 20‐year period, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger produced one oriental motif‐laden fairy tale after another and composed the first German‐language fairy‐tale play, Der Derwisch (The Dervish, 1780). Similarly, Johann Heinrich Voss published a German‐language version of The Arabian Nights, several of whose tales and many of whose motifs recur in the Grimm collection.

According to Manfred Grätz, the most important contemporary historian of fairy tales in 18th‐century Germany, a translation of long‐lasting significance was Wilhelm Christhelf Siegmund Mylius's rendering of three fairy tales by Anthony Hamilton in 1777. Mylius's translation archaicized the genre by introducing an old‐fashioned vocabulary tinged with folk usage. Mylius simultaneously created a ‘folk’ version of fairy tales, a myth of their folk origins, and a corresponding myth of an oral tradition for fairy tales in Germany. In the same spirit, Johann Karl August Musäus called his own collection of distinctly literary fairy tales Volksmärchen der Deutschen (Folk Tales of the Germans, 1782–6), and Benedikte Naubert similarly invoked the ‘folk’ in the title of her collection of equally literary fairy tales, Neue Volksmärchen der Deutschen (New Folk Tales of the Germans, 1789–93), and so did Ludwig Tieck in his Volksmärchen (Folk Tales, 1797). By naming his reworked chapbook about King Arthur an ‘old wives' tale’ in 1786, Johann Ferdinand Roth did the same.

Christoph Wilhelm Guenther furthered the notion of orality and fairy tales' suitability for children in 1787. He had compiled his own tales from popular motifs, designated them ‘Denkmäler der Vorzeit’ (monuments to prehistory), and entitled the book Kindermärchen aus mündlichen Erzählungen gesammelt (Children's Tales Gathered from Oral Stories). And yet, the kinds of fairy‐tale stories that authors and editors increasingly labelled ‘ancient’ had not actually formed part of Germany's oral folk culture, as Rudolf Schenda has persuasively demonstrated in a lifetime of scholarly investigation.

A comprehensive history of German translations of French fairy tales is a relatively recent phenomenon (Grätz). That history shows that in 1761 the nine‐volume Cabinet der Feen, with 72 tales by Mme de Murat, Mlle Lhéritier, Mme d'Aulnoy, Mlle de La Force, and Louise d'Auneuil, among others, was published in Nuremberg, and that from 1790 to 1797 Friedrich Justin Bertuch published the Blaue Bibliothek aller Nationen (Blue Library of All Nations) in Gotha. Bertuch's little books, modelled on those of the French Bibliothèque bleue, republished the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Mme d'Aulnoy, as well as those of now less known or even unknown authors like Catherine de Lintot, Hamilton, and Jean de Préchac, and continuations of The Thousand and One Nights by Chavis and Jacques Cazotte, and oriental tales from the Arabic and Persian‐language traditions. In disseminating them to a broad German readership that included artisans as well as bourgeois girls, Bertuch made the myth of fairy tales among the folk a reality. In addition, Bertuch contributed to the myth of orality by writing of the world‐wide ubiquity of an oral ‘Märchentradition’ (storytelling tradition; see below for discussion of the difficulties introduced by terminological confusion), and like so many others, he ascribed his print sources to oral origins. A flood of fairy‐tale reprints, piratings, and knock‐offs followed, of which Albert Ludwig Grimm's various editions offer an excellent example. The fairy‐tale tradition that we now know as ‘German’ was thoroughly international at the beginning of the 1800s.

In the decades on either side of 1800, German classical and romantic authors elevated the fairy‐tale genre into the nation's literary canon by composing new fairy tales and reworking old ones. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe tried his hand, and E. T. A. Hoffmann set the fantastic at the centre of his œuvre.

Against a background of exogenous tales circulating in Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm formulated requirements for a ‘German’ collection. The opening sentences of the Foreword to the first edition of their Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales) refer in coded language to Napoleon's invasion and subjection of Germany between 1806 and 1813, but Wilhelm's choice of metaphor raised their enterprise to a transcendent and eternal level by using the language of nature to depict the German countryside: ‘It is heartwarming, when tempest or misfortune sent from above crushes an entire planting to earth, that humble wayside hedges and bushes provide a small secure place where a few seedlings remain upright. When the sun shines favourably, then they grow on alone and unnoticed; no scythe cuts them in season for the storeroom; but in late summer, when their swelling seeds ripen, humble, pious hands come searching and lay stalk upon stalk, carefully bound up, and regarding them more highly than entire sheaves, carry them home; and through the winter they are the nourishment, perhaps the only seeds for the future’ (vol. i (1812), p. v).

Despite the Grimms' intention to collect characteristically German tales, their first edition of the Children's and Household Tales included German translations of several Perrault tales, for example, ‘Bluebeard’, ‘Cinderella’, and ‘Puss‐in‐Boots’. In part this happened because the Grimms believed that Perrault had collected from popular tradition. For the second edition of 1819, Wilhelm summarily replaced them with German versions of similar tales, where they existed.

Public taste lagged behind the Grimms' conception of ‘German’ tales, however, as the sales history of their tales shows. Volume i, which contained a few French tales and bourgeois versions of several other tales, sold well; volume ii with folk versions sold poorly; and when a second edition in 1819 replaced bourgeois and French versions with German ‘folk’ ones, sales dropped to a trickle. On the other hand, their nationalistic concerns were shared by many German as well as European intellectuals, and enthusiasm for the Grimms' tales made them a model for tale collections in one country after another.

Because the Grimms' collection was so influential, it is important to describe its contents in the context of Germany's tale tradition. It includes a few literary fairy tales, extended narratives of magic and transformation with interlocking sub‐stories. It also includes many modern fairy tales, that is, stories of social reversal through a royal marriage mediated by magic. And it contains as well a broad range of traditional minor genres: cautionary tales like ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, animal tales like ‘The Bremen Town Musicians’, tales of origins like ‘The Moom’ or ‘The Duration of Life’, and religious tales like ‘Marienkind’. Much of their 19th‐century dissemination derived from school and home readers such as Heinrich Dittmar's Deutsches Lesebuch (German Reader), produced in many volumes from 1821 onward.

Within German‐speaking Central Europe the Grimm collection precipitated local collecting activity, so that in the following decades a tale collection (fairy and otherwise) for every geographic district became available. All claimed orality, but more often than not the tales themselves came from older published collections. (Literary fairy tales, with their elaborated vocabularies, and modern fairy tales, with their tightly structured plots, are particularly hard to pass on orally, and they derive nearly exclusively from published precursors.)

Literary fairy tales, as opposed to simplified and simple folk tales, continued to thrive in the 19th century, in part because childhood experience was redefined in the romantic period to include fantasy. Foremost among 19th‐century literary fairy tales was Ludwig Bechstein's Deutsches Märchenbuch (1845), which was repeatedly published in both cheap and expensive editions, small and large formats, illustrated and unillustrated, in northern and western German‐speaking areas. A second Bechstein collection, the Neues Deutsches Märchenbuch, was published principally in Vienna and Budapest and distributed throughout the southern and eastern areas of German‐speaking Central Europe. Like the Deutsches Märchenbuch, it also addressed a variety of market segments.

Bechstein's books dominated the 19th‐century German fairy‐tale market in terms of book sales, but both Bechstein's and the Grimms' tales were represented in the broadly popular poster format. It was principally the Grimms' tales, however, which made their way through school readers into the core syllabuses of German‐speaking Central Europe. Their spare style, with a minimum of distinguishing adjectives and with little in the way of individually nuanced characterizations of the stories' heroes and heroines, made the Grimms' tales ideal vehicles for didactic classroom discussions. Manuals provided teachers with word‐by‐word guidance about how to utilize individual tales. The following class‐plan segment draws on the Grimms' tale ‘Die Sterntaler’ (‘The Star‐Money’) and specifies both teacher questions, and pupil response (in bold type):

Goal (read or spoken aloud to the assembled class). We are going to discuss a story about a little girl who is richly rewarded.

Preparatory questions for teacher to ask the class . What's your name? Where do you live? Who lives at your house? Father, mother, brother. What do you receive from your father and mother? Food, clothing, shelter. (To be determined by additional questions!)

Presentation What would you like to know first about the little girl? Her name. I know your name. But I don't know the little girl's name … Now what would you like to know about the little girl? Where she lived …?

But soon the little girl was in distress. How did that come about? Her father died. She cried a lot. Then things got even worse. What happened? Her mother died too. Why was that so bad for the girl? Her parents gave her everything, a room, a little bed for sleeping, food …

What do you like about the little girl? I like the way she loved her parents. What would she have said to her mother, when she was given a new dress, a piece of cake, an apple, and so on? Thank you, dear mother. That's how the little girl showed herself grateful. What do you like about the little girl?—that she was grateful …

What did God like most about her? That she trusted in God.

That she was compassionate.

All children should be like that …

… But how can you show your parents that you love them? Help at home, do what you're told, don't make noise when father wants to rest, don't get your clothes dirty …

Germany's bookbuyers also continued to be receptive to foreign fairy tales in the 19th century. Hans Christian Andersen's tales appeared in German soon after their initial publication in Denmark, and continued to be republished with ever‐new illustrations throughout the 20th century.

Grimm, Bechstein, and A. L. Grimm represent the best‐known 19th‐century fairy‐tale collections. But the 19th century was awash with the genre. Literarily fashionable, structurally open, and with a pre‐available stock of motifs and plots that could be varied at will, fairy tales attracted literati as well as antiquarians. The fairy‐tale creations of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Ludwig Tieck, Clemens Brentano, Wilhelm Hauff, Eduard Mörike, and Gottfried Keller have been well documented in secondary literature; others, like those of Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, and Karl Wilhelm Salice Contessa (despite their names, all German‐born German writers) less so. Fairy tales also formed a customary part of mixed collections, such as Hauff's story almanacs (1826–8), which included folk tales, legends, horror, ghost, and crime stories.

Fairy tales attracted female attention increasingly in 19th‐century Germany. The best‐known group comprised the girls of the Kaffeterkreis, who with Gisela von Arnim as their leader formed a weekly Berlin salon in 1843, at which the members considered anonymously submitted writings. Usually fairy tales with female‐centred plots, they were eventually published in their Kaffeterzeitung. The Kaffeterkreis was symptomatic of broad interest among 19th‐century women in fairy tales, which both preceded and followed the Grimms' publications. Examples include Sophie Mereau‐Brentano, Wun derbilder und Träume in eilf [sic] Mährchen (Phantasms and Dreams in Eleven Stories, 1802); Sophie de la Motte Fouqué, Drei Mährchen von Serena (Serena's Three Tales, 1806); Agnes Franz, Kinderlust (Children's Joy, 1804); Karoline Stahl, Fabeln, Mährchen und Erzählungen für Kinder (Fables, Stories, and Tales for Children, 1818); Amalie Schoppe, Kleine Mährchen‐Bibliothek (Little Library of Stories, 1828); and Clara Fechner, Die schwarze Tante (The Black Aunt, 1848). According to Shawn Jarvis, women published over 200 fairy‐tale collections in German‐speaking countries in the 19th century.

At the turn of the 20th century, Grimms' Tales, allegorically representative of true Germanness, rose above its former rivals. Sacralized and nationalized, they became a verbal version of forested Germany in the rhetoric of publicists like Franz Heyden and then‐influential historians of children's literature, like Leopold Köster.

During the Weimar period, a new wave of fairy‐tale composition developed. Politically committed to revolutionary social change, socialist authors such as Edwin Hoernle, Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Bruno Schönlank, Béla Balázs, and Felix Fechenbach urged the institution of a new social and economic order. Because their stories so frequently end with the protagonist's failure, they can largely be accounted anti‐fairy tales.

With the conclusion of World War II, Britain, France, the United States, and the USSR (the Allies) each occupied a quadrant of Germany. Persuaded that the Grimms' Tales had socialized Germans to violence and anti‐Semitism, occupying authorities in the American sector scoured school and municipal library shelves and removed offending copies to the United States, where they were redistributed to university and public libraries.

Despite military efforts to banish the Grimms' Tales, they returned immediately. In 1945, a Stuttgart publisher issued a small edition of 29 tales, and for the next few years licences were required. New editions of the Grimms' Tales were published, at first cautiously and in expurgated form, and then in a torrent which reached a high water mark during the celebration of the bicentenary of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms' births in 1984–6. The popularity of the Grimms' tales continues to the present day, sustained by popularized Jungian, Freudian, anthroposophic, and Christian interpretations.

Coincident with popular acceptance of the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales in the second half of the 20th century were numerous newly composed fairy‐tale collections that their authors intended as replacements for or as alternatives to the Grimms' tales. Some who were involved in this effort were Ernst Wiechert, Otto Flake, Hans Watzlik, Hanns Arens, and Paul Alverdes.

Following a season of university unrest in the spring of 1968, radical social movements spawned fairy‐tale revisions in western Germany. Initially anti‐capitalist, the revisions eventually also decried violence and encouraged gender equality.

The second half of the 20th century also witnessed a rising tide of criticism of the Grimms' tales from intellectuals. Parodies of the Grimms and of their tales had long existed, but these had usually been marked by affection; that was still the case with Hans Traxler's Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel (The Truth about Hansel and Gretel, 1963). The parodies that appeared after 1968 were often bitingly bitter and angrily denunciatory. Their authors understood the Grimms' Tales as the embodiment of everything that they perceived as morally flawed or politically and socially wrong in modern Germany. Foremost among revisionist fairy tale authors were Hans‐Joachim Gelberg (Geh und spiel mit dem Riesen (Go Play with the Giant, 1971) ) and Janosch (Janosch erzählt Grimm's Märchen (Janosch tells Grimm's Tales, 1972)). Among the broad spectrum of revisionist fairy tales produced in this period, Jack Zipes identified six distinct streams: socially satirical, utopian, pedagogical, feminist, parodic, and spiritual.

A slightly different set of developments characterized the USSR‐dominated eastern sector of Germany from 1949 to 1989. Just as the socialist ideals of the Weimar period had engendered revisions of fairy tales, so, too, did the related ideals implemented by the Kinderbuchverlag (Children's Literature Publishing House). Schoolchildren there were exposed to translations into German of fairy tales from other socialist countries, and in addition the Grimms' Tales were carefully edited to remove egregious violence. Hence, in eastern Germany Snow White's story no longer ended with her stepmother forced to dance to death in red‐hot iron slippers, and the Goose Girl's tormenter was simply chased from the land instead of being rolled downhill in a nail‐studded barrel.

Eastern intellectuals also rewrote fairy tales. Notable were Franz Fühmann, whose poems and stories questioned hallowed fairy‐tale virtues like obedience (1966), and Horst Matthies, whose ‘non‐fairy tales’, as he designated them, explored social problems in eastern Germany.

The extent to which German intellectuals have reformulated and reformed individual fairy tales as well as the genre itself indicates the privileged position accorded fairy tales in German popular and learned culture. The German Europäische Märchengesellschaft (European Fairy Tale Society), the largest of its kind anywhere in the world, holds large annual meetings at which storytellers and scholars alike gather, while the Enzyklopädie des Märchens (Encyclopedia of the Tale), an ongoing project of the German Academy of Sciences whose completion is envisaged for about 2010, is a monumental scholarly undertaking funded by the national government.

The publishing history of fairy tales in Germany from 1550 to the present is one of gradual importation of tales from beyond its borders, their translation and transformation into German tales, and their ultimate integration into German culture. First to appear were French tales augmented by oriental literary fairy tales in French. Next were French and oriental fairy tales translated into German, tales that were themselves adapted for the German Blue Library of all Nations. These popular books provided Germany's simple readers with a shared repertoire of tales, which in turn furnished subsequent collectors all over Germany with ‘folk’ sources. From a broad field of competing tale collections in the 19th‐century, the Grimms' Tales slowly gained ground in the popular mind until they came to dominate the genre at the end of the 19th and through the 20th centuries.

2. fairytale scholarship

It has long been believed that the fairy tale is an ancient genre that has existed since the beginnings of human communication, but many 20th‐century scholars, beginning with Albert Wesselski, no longer believe that to be true. They note the medieval documentary evidence from the lowest to the highest levels of society of a great variety of literary genres, among which were ballads, verse epics, Aesopic fables, folk tales, legends, animal tales, and jests, but not a single fairy tale. This is as true of a compendious source like the Karlsruhe Codex 408 as it is of hundreds of marginal manuscript notations.

A principal cause of confusion surrounding the history of the fairy tale in Germany is the German word Märchen, which has designated the fairy‐tale genre for nearly two centuries. Märchen means ‘brief tale’. Brief tales have existed for uncounted millenia, but because the word Märchen formed part of the title of the Grimms' Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen—which was often translated into English as Grimms' Fairy Tales—it came to stand for ‘fairy tales’ in English in the 19th and 20th centuries. As a result, everything that was written about Märchen was undifferentiatedly, and often erroneously, applied to ‘fairy tales’. That confusion has been further compounded by the fact that certain kinds of tales which are not themselves fairy tales, but which are routinely included in fairy‐tale collections, do have a demonstrably long history. One is the cautionary tale ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

Many scholars have concluded that Ecbasis captivi (c.1043–6) by Egbert of Liège, with its little girl, tunica rubicunda, and worrying wolf, provides an ancient rendering of the well‐known modern story. Most contemporary scholars, however, distinguish between individual motifs and entire stories in the world of contemporary tales and storytelling, but since the early 19th century beginnings of fairy‐tale scholarship, there has existed a tendency to equate the documented existence of an individual motif with the contemporaneous presence of an entire fairy tale. The vocabulary and names in ‘Cinderella’ stories provide another relevant example. Its heroine in the Grimms' version is Aschenputtel, in the Bechstein version Aschenbrödel. Some commentators have pointed to the fact that similar names were used by Martin Luther (‘Aschenbroedel’), Geiler von Keysersberg (‘Eschengrudel’), and Georg Rollenhagen (‘Aschenpoessel’) in the 1500s to prove that the Aschenputtel/Cinderella story was widespread at that time. But no evidence exists to support that proposition. The greater likelihood is that when the ‘Cinderella’ story entered Germany, it appropriated an already‐existing name for its heroine.

Bibliography

• Apel, Friedmar, Die Zaubergärten der Phantasie. Zur Theorie und Geschichte des Kunstmärchens (1978).
• Grätz, Manfred, Das Märchen in der deutschen Aufklärung. Vom Feenmärchen zum Volksmärchen (1988).
• Haase, Donald, The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales (1993).
• Klotz, Volker, Das europäische Kunstmärchen (1985).
• Schenda, Rudolf, Von Mund zu Ohr: Bausteine zu einer Kulturgeschichte volkstümlichen Erzählens in Europa (1993).
• Tismar, Jens, Kunstmärchen (1977).

— Ruth B. Bottigheimer

Germany, for the Romans an undefined area east of the Rhine (Rhenus) and north of the Danube (Danubius or Ister). In the north it comprised what are now Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The German tribes originated in south Scandinavia and Jutland, and from about 1000 BC they expanded southwards and westwards. According to Tacitus one of the tribes was called Germani, and this name was first used by the Gauls to designate the whole race. It was not until shortly after 120 BC that they entered Roman history, when the tribes of the Cimbri and the Teutones, invading south-east Gaul and, later, northern Italy, inspired great terror at Rome; they were finally destroyed by Roman armies under Marius. Early in the first century BC another German tribe, the Suebi, moved south-west to the area of the rivers Main (Moenus) and Rhine. Their inroads into Gaul in 58 BC led Julius Caesar to drive them back across the Rhine (as related in the first book of Caesar's Gallic War), which river became a frontier of the Roman empire. Later, under Augustus, Roman invasions of German territory were systematically undertaken, but the Roman ascendancy in this region was brought to an end in AD 9 when the Roman forces under P. Quinctilius Varus were destroyed by the German chief Arminius. After this disaster Augustus abandoned all attempts to establish a frontier beyond the Rhine, although in the east he established the river Danube as a frontier against tribes from the north. Around AD 90 Domitian formally established the two provinces of Germania Superior (Upper Germany) in the south and Germania Inferior (Lower Germany) in the north. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–80) there occurred a dangerous invasion across the Danube by the Marcomanni, a German tribe who advanced even into Italy and besieged Aquileia (near the coast at the head of the Adriatic Sea). The resulting war continued to the end of the emperor's life, and his successor Commodus had to make a compromise peace with the Germans. During the next three centuries the German tribes, especially the Alemanni and Franks, harassed Gaul by frequent invasions and finally crossed in great numbers over the Rhine, the Danube, and the Alps, conquering Gaul, Italy, and Spain and even penetrating into Africa. Other tribes such as the Angli and the Saxons had by that time crossed over into Britain. Nearly the whole of western Europe was thus over-run by German tribes. (See also FALL OF ROME.)

Country in central Europe. During World War I (which lasted from 1914 to 1918), Germany fought alongside Austria-Hungary and Italy against Great Britain, France, the United States, and Russia. After Germany was vanquished by the Allies and the war ended, the democratic Weimar Republic was established (under which the country's Jews enjoyed complete legal equality). However, the Weimar period was fraught with unemployment and economic disaster. The Allies made Germany pay them huge sums of money to make up for their material losses in the war, and the situation got even worse in 1929 when the Great Depression hit. The economic desperation in Germany led to great turbulence: extremist political parties gained in strength, including the Nazi Party on one end of the political spectrum and the Communist Party on the other. Both gathered many new followers in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and both proposed radical solutions to the country's economic and social woes.

In January 1933 Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to national power in Germany. Hitler soon became the country's dictator, and declared the establishment of the Third Reich---his name for the new German Empire. During their first years in power, the Nazis tried to redraw the face of Germany. One of their main goals was to erase the line between the government and the party institutions. For example, after 1936 both the police (a government institution) and the SS (a party institution) were directed by the same man, Heinrich Himmler. In addition, many police officers were awarded SS ranks. The Nazis also sought to restrict and supervise German art and culture, as evidenced by the 1933 public burning of books that were not approved of by the Nazi Party.

During the first years of the Nazi regime, all those who opposed the Nazis in any way were imprisoned in the newly established Concentration Camps, and were forced to stay there until their opposition had been broken down. Many Germans truly accepted Nazism, while others did not but conformed in public in order to avoid confrontation. Very few Germans actively resisted the Nazis, and on the face of it, at least, Germany became a Nazi society.

Hitler's foreign policy successes amassed before World War II even started gained him immense public support. Several regions were either reunited with Germany or annexed to it without war, such as the Saar region in 1935, Austria and the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Bohemia and Moravia in 1939. Then, on September 1, 1939 German troops invaded Poland, launching a world war. In the spring of 1940 the fighting extended to Western Europe, to the Balkans in the spring of 1941, and to the Soviet Union in late June of that year. The Germans gained victory after victory; the Nazis were fighting to ensure their place of dominance in Europe and by extension the world, and to gain living space, or Lebensraum, for the German people. They also meant to reshape the world in their own racial image, which included solving the so-called Jewish problem. However, their fortunes changed after their defeat by the Soviets at Stalingrad in early 1943. The Allied invasions of Italy in 1943 and France in 1944 sealed Nazi Germany's fate, and its final defeat came in May 1945.

Back in 1933 when Hitler came to power, some 566,000 Jews by a racial definition were living in Germany, making up less than one percent of the entire population. One-third of those Jews lived in the capital, Berlin, and another third resided in other big cities. Immediately after the Nazis took control of the government, they began to exclude Jews from German society and strip them of their legal and civil rights. Jews were fired from their jobs, not allowed to study at universities, and were kept out of German cultural life. In September 1935 the Germans passed the racial Nuremberg Laws which led to the definition of who was to be considered a Jew, and further isolated Jews from the rest of the society, stripping them of their citizenship. In addition, antisemitic measures continued to be implemented, peaking in the destructive Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, during which hundreds of synagogues were burned down, Jewish homes and businesses were attacked and pillaged, and thousands of Jews were abused and sent to concentration camps.

In response to the constantly multiplying anti-Jewish measures, the Jews of Germany set up a comprehensive network of self-help associations. Their most important goal was to facilitate emigration, but they also set up organizations for relief within Germany, itself. These included adult education centers (see also Mittelstelle Fuer Juedische Erwachsenenbildung), cultural associations (see also Cultural Union of German Jews), social welfare bodies, and the umbrella organization called the Reich Representation of German Jews.

Between 1933 and 1941 about 346,000 Jews emigrated from Germany, most before the outbreak of the war. Between Kristallnacht and the outbreak of the war, flight reached panic level proportions.

In September 1941 all Jews in Germany over the age of six were ordered to don the Jewish badge (see also Badge, Jewish). The Deportation of German Jews had begun back in 1940, when Jews from Stettin were sent to Poland and Jews from Baden and the Saar region were sent to France. Most were later transported to their deaths at Extermination Camps. Deportations from the rest of Germany began in October 1941; at first, Jews were sent to the Ghettos of Eastern Europe, but later deportation transports were sent directly to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. All told some 200,000 German Jews died during the Holocaust. About 137,000 were deported from Germany, of whom 128,000 were murdered. The rest of the murdered German Jews had fled to countries that later fell under Nazi influence. In Germany itself about 20,000 Jews survived, including three-quarters of the Mischlinge.

The first contacts between psychoanalysis and Germany occurred during the discussions and correspondence between Freud and Wilhelm Fliess at the end of the 1890s and continued through Freud's student Felix Gattel. Between 1907 and 1910 psychiatrists who formed part of the entourage of Otto Binswanger, professor of psychiatry at Jena, became familiar with the "cathartic method." They included Wolfgang Warda, Wilhelm Strohmayer, Arnold Georg Stegmann, Georg Wanke, Iwan Bloch, Arthur Muthmann, Otto Juliusburger, and Jaroslav Marcinowski.

The first systematic application of psychoanalysis in Berlin was carried out by Karl Abraham, a student of Carl Gustav Jung and Eugen Bleuler. Abraham was in close contact with Freud since 1908 and was responsible for the first meeting of the Berliner Psychoanalytische Vereinigung (Berlin Psychoanalytic Association) on August 27, 1908, which involved a group of local doctors, including Magnus Hirschfeld (a sex researcher), Iwan Bloch (dermatology, human sexuality), Otto Juliusburger (psychiatry, abstinence), and Heinrich Koerber (circle of Monists). Later its members included Max Eitingon and Mosche Wulff. In 1910 the International Psychoanalytical Association was founded on the occasion of the second international congress of psychoanalysis in Nuremberg, with the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association the leading regional group. By the end of 1911 the Berlin association had eleven members, including three women, Tatiana Rosenthal, Karen Horney, and Margarete Stegmann, the first women analysts. In June 1912 two other nonphysician women were admitted as members at large.

Since German psychiatrists resisted psychoanalysis, recognition took place through various cultural movements (sexual liberation, the emancipation of women, judicial reform, monism). At the time two psychoanalytic congresses were held in Germany: the Weimar congress on September 21, 1911 and the Munich congress on September 7, 1913. The Berlin Psychoanalytic Association underwent qualitative consolidation in an effort to set itself apart from the sexual sciences (after the exclusion of Magnus Hirschfeld in 1911) and in reaction to the defection of Carl Jung, who gave up the presidency of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1913 and was supported by the Munich group.

Aside from its institutionalization, psychoanalysis received a welcome reception in literature (from authors Lou Andreas-Salomé, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Döblin). Indeed, the city of Frankfurt awarded Sigmund Freud the Goethe Prize in 1930. It was also well received in art (though the mediation of Otto Gros, who was part of the action group that included F. Pfemfert, F. Jung, E. Mühsam). Georg Wilhelm Pabst's film Geheimnisse einer Seele (The mysteries of a soul; 1926) was made in collaboration with Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs.

Georg Groddeck, the "wild analyst" and the "father of psychosomatics," opened a fifteen-bed clinic in Baden-Baden. During World War I, an opportunity arose to prove the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in treating war neuroses. This had the effect of identifying the majority of analysts with the objectives of the war (with the exception of Helene Stöcker and Siegfried Bernfeld) and enabled them to maintain international scientific dialogue (for example, through the publication of the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse). Official recognition of psychoanalysis grew, as demonstrated by the presence of government representatives from Austria, Germany, and Hungary at the 1918 Budapest congress, whose theme was the use of psychoanalysis in treating war neuroses. It was here that Sigmund Freud spoke in favor of the use of mass psychoanalysis. In 1919 the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag (International Psychoanalytic Press) was founded in Leipzig (later in March 1936 the Nazis confiscated the firm's inventory).

The executive board of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association appointed Max Eitingon, Ernst Simmel, and Karl Abraham on September 26, 1919, to head the Poliklinik für psychoanalytische Behandlung nervöser Krankheiten (Polyclinic for the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Mental Illnesses), which opened on February 16, 1920. Though the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association managed the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and the polyclinic, Max Eitingon owned the physical assets and library. He financed the association with an annual fund of 16,000 Reichsmarks. Annual elections were held for the various positions (polyclinic, teaching, candidate, cash management, and subventions). The association grew through an influx of Hungarian analysts fleeing the revolution and counterrevolution, as well as the arrival of analysts from other countries, who were attracted by the freedom and liberality of the Weimar Republic and the then favorable economic situation in Germany. From 1923 the training of analysts was systematized according to guidelines established by Max Eitingon, Carl Müller-Braunschweig, and Sándor Radó and included theoretical courses, a required analysis, and supervised analyses. In 1925 analytic treatment was recognized by a new Prussian order on honoraria (PREUGO) and the German doctor's agreement (ADGO). Following the death of Karl Abraham (on December 25, 1925), Ernst Simmel became director of the association (Sándor Radó was secretary, and Karen Horney was treasurer). On April 24, 1926, the association, in compliance with the international guidelines introduced by Ernest Jones, president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, became the Deutsche psychoanalytische Gesellschaft (DPG; German Psychoanalytic Society).

Germany was host to international psychoanalytic congresses in 1922 (Berlin), 1925 (Bad Homburg), and 1932 (Wiesbaden), as well as a couple of national conferences in 1924 (Würzburg) and 1930 (Dresden). Psychoanalytic work groups were formed in Leipzig in 1919 around Karl H. Voitel (from which a second group formed in September 1922 with Therese Benedek at its head), in Frankfurt in 1926 (with members Karl Landauer and Heinrich Meng), in Stuttgart in 1930 (with members Gustav Hans Graber and Hermann Gundert), and in Hamburg in 1930 (with members Clara Happel and August Watermann).

In 1929 the Südwestdeutsche psychoanalytische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Southwest German Psychoanalytic Work Group, with members Karl Landauer, Heinrich Meng, and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann) was formed in Frankfurt in close collaboration with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) (with members Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno). This work group sought to diffuse psychoanalysis by providing training analysis and classes on theory held at the university for candidates without any therapeutic training. A few psychoanalytic clinics were established, though they soon closed for lack of financing. There were the Therapeutikum (from 1924 to 1928, with room for fifteen patients), founded by Erich Fromm and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann in Heidelberg to create a bridge between orthodox Judaism and psychoanalysis, and the Schloss Tegel sanitorium in Berlin (from April 1927 to August 1931) for the treatment of serious neuroses, addictions, and character disturbances.

In 1928 Max Eitingon became president of Internationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag. On January 13, 1931, he was elected president of the DPG, and was assisted by Felix Boehm, Hanns Sachs, and Ernst Simmel.

On April 7, 1933, a law restoring the "office of professions" was issued by the National Socialist government, followed, on April 9, 1933, by an "Aryanization" order directed at medical organizations. On April 22, 1933, medical health insurers started excluding "non-Aryan" doctors, and psychoanalysis was attacked as a "Jewish" science. Yet many eminent non-Jewish representatives of the profession, such as Felix Boehm and Carl Müller-Braunschweig, believed, as did National Socialism itself, that psychoanalysis was an effective therapeutic practice. Many eminent leftist psychoanalysts, including Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel, and Ernst Simmel, considered psychoanalysis to have a worldview opposed to National Socialism.

At the annual DPG meeting of May 6, 1933, when Boehm and Müller-Braunschweig proposed Aryanizing the presidency, most members voted against the change (eight out of fifteen, with five abstentions). On May 10, 1933, the works of Sigmund Freud, along with those of other psychoanalysts, were burned. On November 18, 1933, Boehm and Müller-Braunschweig assumed control of the society, and on December 31, 1933, Max Eitingon left Berlin.

At the annual DPG meeting held on December 1, 1935, the society, with the assistance of Ernst Jones, president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, refused to dissolve and decided to remain within the association. However, it required its Jewish members to leave the society. By 1936, 74 analysts had left Germany. Salomea Kempner, August Watermann, and Karl Landauer did not survive their incarceration by the National Socialists.

Some members of the DPG resisted the regime: Edith Jacobsohn fought with the socialist resistance group Neu Beginnen (New Beginnings). She was arrested on October 24, 1935, but managed to escape and fled to the United States. The DPG then passed a resolution that required members to abstain from politics. In February 1937 Käthe Dräger became head of the Berlin committee of the KPD-Opposition (the opposition group formed to fight the German communist party, or KPD). She wrote and distributed antifascist writings and tracts, and helped the families of comrades who had been jailed. In 1937 John Rittmeister was forced to flee Switzerland for "communist activity," and in 1941 he joined the resistance group that had formed around H. Schultze-Boysen (the Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra). He was arrested on September 26, 1942, and executed on May 13, 1943. Fourteen psychoanalysts remained in Germany.

Discussions between Felix Boehm (president of the DPG), Sigmund and Anna Freud, and other leading analysts gave Boehm the impression of a certain neutrality toward or even support for his and the DPG's adaptation to the National Socialist regime. But those involved did not want to further complicate matters, though they did not agree with his political views or the ideological conformism of Müller-Braunschweig. The Ministry of the Interior told Boehm that to obtain authorization to teach, he, as president of the DPG, had to fold the other psychotherapeutic organizations into the Deutsches Institut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie (German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy), which was to be under National Socialist control and run by Professor Matthias Heinrich Göring.

The new institute was founded in May 1936, and Max Eitingon's assets "inventoried." This was the beginning of the development of a "German psychotherapy," an eclectic mix of different psychotherapeutic theories. The DPG was dissolved on November 19, 1938, after an aborted attempt by MüllerBraunschweig to transfer the Wiener Psychoanalytische Vereinigung (WPV; Vienna Psychoanalytic Society) and the publishing house to the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy, within which it would become working group A.

Although Boehm and Müller-Braunschweig were officially banned from teaching and publishing, they were both important collaborators of the institute. They ran the polyclinic, and Boehm coordinated the working group on homosexuality, while MüllerBraunschweig coordinated the teaching program. The ban on the use of psychoanalytic terminology did not affect Harald Schultz-Hencke, however, who in 1933 developed a form of "neopsychoanalysis," an amalgam of current psychoanalytic teachings, by abandoning metapsychology and other essential elements of analysis.

Of the 300 members of the medical staff of the German Institute (including 17 members of the DPG/WPV), 41 were members of the Nazi party (the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), and of the 145 members who were not doctors (25 of whom were members of the DPG/WPV), 22 were party members. Although most of the DPG members remaining in Germany had managed to adapt to the Nazi regime, only Doctor Gerhard Scheunert was a member of the Nazi party. The German Institute, by then solidly established, was recognized by the union of German workers, financed by the Luftwaffe and private insurers, and, during the war, was "assigned to the war effort." Eventually it was raised to the level of a government institute within the Reich's research council (Reichsinstitut im Reichsforschungsrat), with an annual budget of 880,000 Reichsmarks.

After the war, though participants claimed to have sought to "save psychoanalysis" by their underground presence, they faced considerable skepticism and criticism from colleagues living abroad. On October 16, 1945, the DPG was reestablished with MüllerBraunschweig as its first president, Boehm as representative, and Werner Kemper as the third member of the office staff. It had 35 ordinary members and 2 members at large, 12 of whom had been trained between 1936 and 1945. On April 29, 1946, it resumed activities (as the Berliner Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft until December 3, 1950), but the British military authorities forced the DPG to strike any mention of being a "member of the International Psychoanalytical Association." On May 9, 1947, the Institut für Psychotherapie was founded in Berlin, with teachers from a variety of psychotherapeutic backgrounds, to provide training in psychotherapy; in 1948 the institute also began training "education counselors," or Psychagogen (child and adolescent therapists).

During the first postwar International Congress of Psychoanalysis, which took place in Zurich in 1949, the confrontation between Harald Schultz-Hencke's neopsychoanalysis and the conventional Freudian position of Müller-Braunschweig reached its culmination. The DPG was provisionally admitted to the International Psychoanalytical Association, subject to the requirement that its members state their position openly.

On May 13, 1950, Müller-Braunschweig, unsuccessful in his attempts to obtain recognition from Schultz-Hencke, secretly founded the Deutsche psychoanalytische Vereinigung (DPV; German Psychoanalytic Association). The DPV was admitted to the International Psychoanalytical Association at the 1951 Amsterdam congress, but not the DPG. The DPG only succeeded in regaining membership as the IPA Executive Council Provisional Society at the IPA Congress in Nice in 2001. In 2004 the DPV was the second largest group within the International Psychoanalytical Association in terms of number of members. At the suggestion of Werner Schwidder (member of the DPG and student of Schultz-Hencke), the DPG, in 1962, joined with other neopsychoanalytic groups to form the Internationale Föderation psychoanalytischer Gesellschaften (International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies), comprising twenty individual societies in Europe, North America, and South America.

In spite of struggles for influence between the DPG and the DPV, which were just beginning to ease, in 1949 Wilhelm Bitter founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychoanalyse, Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Tiefenpsychologie (German Society for Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics, and Depth Psychology), a professional organization incorporating the major trends in depth psychology (neopsychoanalysis, conventional Freudianism, Jungian analysis, Adlerian analysis). The member societies took turns supplying presidents. As of 2004, it had approximately 3,150 members in 45 institutes, which are recognized by the kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung (German association of registered physicians) and German medical associations as establishments providing further education to become child and youth analytical psychotherapists. Outside Berlin, working groups and psychotherapeutic establishments were created in Munich (the successor of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy and the mobile psychosomatic service of Johann Cremerius), Stuttgart (the working group in 1946, and in 1948 the Institut für Psychotherapie und Tiefenpsychologie [Institute for Psychotherapy and Depth Psychology], representing the various forms of depth psychology and founded by Wilhelm Bitter, Hermann Gundert, and Felix Schottlaender), Heidelberg (the department of psychosomatics run by Alexander Mitscherlich), Bremen (the working group founded by Hildegard Buder in 1949, and an institute founded by R. W. Schulte and Franz Rudolf Haarstrick in 1951), and Göttingen (the Tiefenbrunn regional hospital, founded by G. Kühnel and W. Schwidder). Later, institutes were created in all the major cities of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Berlin institute gradually lost its importance and was overshadowed by the institute founded in Frankfurt in 1961 under the direction of Alexander Mitscherlich and associated with the university. This was the Institut und Ausbildungszentrum für Psychoanalyse und psychosomatische Medizin (Institute and Learning Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychosomatic Medicine), which was renamed the Sigmund Freud Institute in 1964.

Mitscherlich and his wife, Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, not only renewed relations with the Institute of Social Research (where Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno were central figures) but also initiated a dialog with the international psychoanalytic community concerning the controversies associated with Germany's National Socialist past. Sparked by criticisms from the student movement, interest in social policies, group therapy, and family therapy grew (relevant authors include Horst-Eberhard Richter, Franz Heigl, Anneliese Heigl-Evers). The "Bernfeld Circle" (Johannes Cremerius) began to question the training and qualifications of analysts, the issue of feminism, and the various polemics surrounding psychoanalysis (Christa Rhode-Dachser).

In the German Democratic Republic, ideology interfered with the resumption of a psychoanalytic tradition, although there was relative tolerance for neopsychoanalysis. In an initial phase running from 1945 to 1949, the analysts Werner Kemper (West Berlin), Alexander Mette (Weimar), and Franz Baumeyer (Arnsdorf) were among the dozen psychiatrists responsible for training and accrediting "mental health caretakers and psychotherapists." In Leipzig, the neurologist A. Beerholdt, although he never completed his analytic coursework, was able to introduce psychoanalysis to several psychiatrists (Wendt, Starke, Behrendt, Böttcher). The only trained psychoanalyst remaining in the German Democratic Republic, Alexander Mette, left psychoanalysis to start a career in politics (he pursued an initial interest in health policies, then a university career, and eventually became a member of the chamber of deputies of the German Democratic Republic and a member of the central committee of the Socialist Unity Party). The contents of psychoanalytic discussions were determined by Harald Schultz-Hencke and his followers, Werner Schwidder, U. Derbolowsky, and G. Kühnel. Schultz-Hencke's appointment as professor at Humboldt University on September 29, 1949, led the DPG to issue a resolution forbidding members from taking posts in both East and West Germany, and Schultz-Hencke gave up his professorship. Following the creation of the German Democratic Republic on October 7, 1949, psychotherapeutic establishments were created in Jena and Leipzig.

From 1950 to 1962, while psychoanalysis was expanding in the United States and an antipsychoanalytic movement was taking place in the Soviet Union (where Freud's work represented a facet of National Socialist ideology), the trend in the German Democratic Republic turned to Pavlovianism. Associated with the therapeutic tradition of Otto Binswanger, Johannes H. Schultz, Ernst Speer, and O. Vogt, in 1951 a department of psychotherapy was opened at the medical polyclinic. There they developed a medical-materialist "rational psychotherapy" intended to replace neopsychoanalysis.

The period from 1963 to 1976, when H. Kleinsorge was president of the DPG, was characterized by greater openness in discussions of psychotherapies and in international relations. In the society a number of sections were set up, organized according to method rather than their theoretical leanings: psychodynamic therapy, group therapy, autogenic training and hypnosis, infant therapy, music therapy. Between 1976 and 1984 recognition was granted to "medical specialists in psychotherapy" and "medical psychologists" (August 1978), and individual therapy was reintroduced. Fifteen regional societies of psychotherapy were created to cover psychotherapeutic needs and the basic training of doctors, and interdisciplinary working groups were formed to further integrate psychoanalysis with the medical field. After 1985 efforts were made to institutionalize psychotherapy in the universities by creating autonomous chairs of psychotherapy and medical psychology, and psychoanalytically oriented research on the body helped to conceptualize group therapy. Access to the psychoanalytic literature was still limited, however: Freud was first published in the German Democratic Republic as late as 1983.

In September 1947, the Studiengesellschaft für praktische Psychologie (Research Society for Practical Psychology) was formed in West Germany for representatives of all the academic professions concerned with the individual. Ever since 1945, in the university exams given to psychologists, psychoanalysis appeared under "depth psychology and education counseling." After the educational reforms of 1973, it appeared in the larger field of "clinical psychology," comprising the study of testing, prevention, rehabilitation, counseling, and other areas outside the field of depth psychology.

Gradually, psychoanalysis disappeared from higher education to be taught in training institutes and the psychosomatic departments of medical schools. Nonetheless, in experimental psychology, psychoanalysis remained the most systematic and most studied psychological theory in 1977. At the beginning of the 1980s, the emphasis on the interpretation of psychoanalytic texts brought about through the influence of Jacques Lacan made its appearance in German scholarship. After 1970 medical psychology and sociology, as well as psychotherapy and psychosomatics, became required material for students of medicine and resulted in the creation of the corresponding chairs and, in some cases, university departments. In 1979 the DPG created a psychoanalysis section alongside psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis became a part of the continuing training of doctors. At the start of the 1990s, specialist medical training included fields such as "psychotherapeutic medicine," "psychiatry and psychotherapy," "psychiatry and psychotherapy of children and adolescents."

With respect to the relations between psychoanalysis and insurers, the Einheitskrankenkasse and the Rentenversicherung, in Berlin, had financed the Zentralinstitut für psychogene Erkrankungen der Versicherungsanstalt Berlin (Central Insurance Institute of Berlin for Mental Illness), founded by Werner Kemper and Harald Schultz-Hencke. By 1955 insurance reforms in Berlin had gradually done away with many of these organizations, but the Central Insurance Institute remains. Empirical follow-up work on outpatients by Franz Baumeyer and Annemarie Dührssen made legal recognition of psychotherapy possible. In 1960 the "Munich model" was instituted; this system involved the sharing of medical expenses among the government (for employees), insurers, and patients, each paying a third. In 1967 psychological and psychoanalytic therapies became covered general medical expenses for which insurers were responsible, following verification of the illness. In 1968 insurers (and in 1971 mutual insurance companies as well) started covering psychotherapy under certain conditions, and they also covered child therapies. On July 1, 1976, the medical committee and insurers modified the guidelines for analytic therapies to recognize neurosis as an illness. Psychosomatic treatment became covered from October 1, 1987. In therapy, if the symptoms are recognized, reimbursement covers 160 fifty-minute hours of treatment, with 80 to 140 additional hours possible. Psychologists who have received analytic training can provide psychoanalytic treatments. With the passing of a law regulating psychotherapists (June 16, 1998), "psychological psychotherapists" and child and youth therapists now require a license to practice medicine.

Among journals, one of the most important is Psyche, which began by focusing on depth psychology but later broadened its coverage to include cultural trends. Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse published contributions to the theory, practice, and history of psychoanalysis. Forum der Psychoanalyse and Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Theorie und Praxis are clinical in orientation. Other journals include Praxis der Psychotherapie und Psychosomatik and Zeitschrift für psychosomatische Medizin und Psychoanalyse.

Until the end of the 1960s, the DPG and the DPV were separated by their divergent theoretical positions concerning Harald Schultz-Hencke's neopsychoanalysis. Since then, the DPG's orientation has shifted to a more international position focused on the ego and the self and on the theory of object relations. Moreover, it has generally supported the classical Freudian position. However, there has been growing interest within both the DPV and the DPG for the Kleinian position, and contacts have developed with the "Middle Group" of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. Though there are a few theoretical differences (Rudolf, 1987), there are more differences in practice. For example, in training analysis the DPV recommends four sessions, and the DPG three.

After accounts were settled over Alexander Mitscherlich's involvement with National Socialism, a reckoning that took place over a twenty-five-year period following the war, the first postwar congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Germany was held in Hamburg in 1985. At the congress there was a growing interest in the history of psychoanalysis, its development (Karen Brecht, Volker Friedrich, Ludger Hermanns, Dierk Juelich, Isidor Kaminer, and Regine Lockot), and its interpretation (Hermann Beland, Ermann). In 1995 and 1996 conferences between groups of German and Israeli psychoanalysts took place (H. Beland). In 1996 the first joint DPG-DPV conference was held on "the division of the psychoanalytic community in Germany and its consequences." In 1996 the two societies, the DPG and DPV, had nearly the same number of members (approximately five hundred each).

Bibliography

Haarstrick, Franz Rudolf. (1994). Die Entwicklung des Gutachterverfahrens in der Psychotherapie. Arbeitskreis Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychoanalyse, Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Tiefenpsychologie/Vereinigung Analytischer Kinder—und Jugendlichen—Psychoterhapeuten, 4.

Hermanns, Ludger M. (1994). Karl Abraham und die Anfänge der Berliner psychoanalytischen Vereinigung. Luzifer-Amor, 13, 30-40.

Höck, Kurt. (1988). Entwicklung der Balint-Gruppenarbeit in der D.D.R. Klinik und Praxis. Berlin: Springer.

Lockot, Regine. (1985). Erinnern und Durcharbeiten: zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie im Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.

Rudolf, Gerd. (1987). Vergleich der Akzeptanz psychoanalytischer Konzepte von I.P.A.- und D.P.G.-Mitgliedern.

—REGINE LOCKOT

Republic in north-central Europe, divided into East Germany and West Germany in 1949 and reunited in 1990. Officially called the Federal Republic of Germany.

• Germany was a collection of competing states until it was unified during the second half of the nineteenth century under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck.
• Germany's industrial, colonial, and naval expansion was considered a threat by the British and French and was one of the main causes of World War I, in which Germany was badly defeated.
• After the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, Germany was divided into four zones occupied by British, French, Soviet, and American forces.
• Since reunification Germany has become Europe's leading economic power. (See East Germany and West Germany under “World History since 1550.”)

The international dialing code for Germany is:   49

It is 6:17 AM, November 30, in Germany.

Germany - Euro

---

Background:

As Europe's largest economy and second most populous nation (after Russia), Germany is a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense organizations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945. With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern productivity and wages up to Western standards. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other EU countries introduced a common European exchange currency, the euro.

Location:	Central Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, between the Netherlands and Poland, south of Denmark
Geographic coordinates:	51 00 N, 9 00 E
Map references:	Europe
Area:	total: 357,021 sq km land: 349,223 sq km water: 7,798 sq km
Area - comparative:	slightly smaller than Montana
Land boundaries:	total: 3,621 km border countries: Austria 784 km, Belgium 167 km, Czech Republic 646 km, Denmark 68 km, France 451 km, Luxembourg 138 km, Netherlands 577 km, Poland 456 km, Switzerland 334 km
Coastline:	2,389 km
Maritime claims:	territorial sea: 12 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm continental shelf: 200 m depth or to the depth of exploitation
Climate:	temperate and marine; cool, cloudy, wet winters and summers; occasional warm mountain (foehn) wind
Terrain:	lowlands in north, uplands in center, Bavarian Alps in south
Elevation extremes:	lowest point: Neuendorf bei Wilster -3.54 m highest point: Zugspitze 2,963 m
Natural resources:	coal, lignite, natural gas, iron ore, copper, nickel, uranium, potash, salt, construction materials, timber, arable land
Land use:	arable land: 33.13% permanent crops: 0.6% other: 66.27% (2005)
Irrigated land:	4,850 sq km (2003)
Total renewable water resources:	188 cu km (2005)
Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural):	total: 38.01 cu km/yr (12%/68%/20%) per capita: 460 cu m/yr (2001)
Natural hazards:	flooding
Environment - current issues:	emissions from coal-burning utilities and industries contribute to air pollution; acid rain, resulting from sulfur dioxide emissions, is damaging forests; pollution in the Baltic Sea from raw sewage and industrial effluents from rivers in eastern Germany; hazardous waste disposal; government established a mechanism for ending the use of nuclear power over the next 15 years; government working to meet EU commitment to identify nature preservation areas in line with the EU's Flora, Fauna, and Habitat directive
Environment - international agreements:	party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 85, Air Pollution-Sulfur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic-Marine Living Resources, Antarctic Seals, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note:	strategic location on North European Plain and along the entrance to the Baltic Sea

Population:	82,329,758 (July 2009 est.)
Age structure:	0-14 years: 13.7% (male 5,768,366/female 5,470,516) 15-64 years: 66.1% (male 27,707,761/female 26,676,759) 65 years and over: 20.3% (male 7,004,805/female 9,701,551) (2009 est.)
Median age:	total: 43.8 years male: 42.6 years female: 45.2 years (2009 est.)
Population growth rate:	-0.053% (2009 est.)
Birth rate:	8.18 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Death rate:	10.8 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net migration rate:	2.19 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Urbanization:	urban population: 74% of total population (2008) rate of urbanization: 0.1% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)
Sex ratio:	at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.04 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.72 male(s)/female total population: 0.97 male(s)/female (2009 est.)
Infant mortality rate:	total: 3.99 deaths/1,000 live births male: 4.41 deaths/1,000 live births female: 3.55 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:	total population: 79.26 years male: 76.26 years female: 82.42 years (2009 est.)
Total fertility rate:	1.41 children born/woman (2009 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:	0.1% (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:	53,000 (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:	fewer than 500 (2007 est.)
Nationality:	noun: German(s) adjective: German
Ethnic groups:	German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, other 6.1% (made up largely of Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish)
Religions:	Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%
Languages:	German
Literacy:	definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male: 99% female: 99% (2003 est.)
School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education):	total: 16 years male: 16 years female: 16 years (2006)
Education expenditures:	4.6% of GDP (2004)
People - note:	second most populous country in Europe after Russia

Country name:	conventional long form: Federal Republic of Germany conventional short form: Germany local long form: Bundesrepublik Deutschland local short form: Deutschland former: German Empire, German Republic, German Reich
Government type:	federal republic
Capital:	name: Berlin geographic coordinates: 52 31 N, 13 24 E time difference: UTC+1 (6 hours ahead of Washington, DC during Standard Time) daylight saving time: +1hr, begins last Sunday in March; ends last Sunday in October
Administrative divisions:	16 states (Laender, singular - Land); Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bayern (Bavaria), Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate), Saarland, Sachsen (Saxony), Sachsen-Anhalt (Saxony-Anhalt), Schleswig-Holstein, Thueringen (Thuringia); note - Bayern, Sachsen, and Thueringen refer to themselves as free states (Freistaaten, singular - Freistaat)
Independence:	18 January 1871 (German Empire unification); divided into four zones of occupation (UK, US, USSR, and later, France) in 1945 following World War II; Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) proclaimed 23 May 1949 and included the former UK, US, and French zones; German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) proclaimed 7 October 1949 and included the former USSR zone; West Germany and East Germany unified 3 October 1990; all four powers formally relinquished rights 15 March 1991
National holiday:	Unity Day, 3 October (1990)
Constitution:	23 May 1949, known as Basic Law; became constitution of the united Germany 3 October 1990
Legal system:	civil law system with indigenous concepts; judicial review of legislative acts in the Federal Constitutional Court; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Suffrage:	18 years of age; universal
Executive branch:	chief of state: President Horst KOEHLER (since 1 July 2004) head of government: Chancellor Angela MERKEL (since 22 November 2005) cabinet: Cabinet or Bundesminister (Federal Ministers) appointed by the president on the recommendation of the chancellor elections: president elected for a five-year term (eligible for a second term) by a Federal Convention, including all members of the Federal Assembly and an equal number of delegates elected by the state parliaments; election last held 23 May 2004 (next scheduled for 23 May 2009); chancellor elected by an absolute majority of the Federal Assembly for a four-year term; Bundestag vote for Chancellor last held 22 November 2005 (next will follow the national elections to be held by 27 September 2009) election results: Horst KOEHLER elected president; received 604 votes of the Federal Convention against 589 for Gesine SCHWAN; Angela MERKEL elected chancellor; vote by Federal Assembly 397 to 202 with 12 abstentions
Legislative branch:	bicameral legislature consists of the Federal Council or Bundesrat (69 votes; state governments sit in the Council; each has three to six votes in proportion to population and are required to vote as a block)and the Federal Assembly or Bundestag (614 seats; members elected by popular vote for a four-year term under a system of personalized proportional representation; a party must win 5% of the national vote or three direct mandates to gain proportional representation and caucus recognition) elections: Bundestag - last held on 18 September 2005 (next to be held no later than autumn 2009); note - there are no elections for the Bundesrat; composition is determined by the composition of the state-level governments; the composition of the Bundesrat has the potential to change any time one of the 16 states holds an election election results: Bundestag - percent of vote by party - CDU/CSU 35.2%, SPD 34.3%, FDP 9.8%, Left 8.7%, Greens 8.1%, other 3.9%; seats by party - CDU/CSU 225, SPD 222, FDP 61, Left 53, Greens 51, independents 2
Judicial branch:	Federal Constitutional Court or Bundesverfassungsgericht (half the judges are elected by the Bundestag and half by the Bundesrat)
Political parties and leaders:	Alliance '90/Greens [Claudia ROTH and Cem OEZDEMIR]; Christian Democratic Union or CDU [Angela MERKEL]; Christian Social Union or CSU [Horst SEEHOFER]; Free Democratic Party or FDP [Guido WESTERWELLE]; Left Party or Die Linke [Lothar BISKY and Oskar LAFONTAINE]; Social Democratic Party or SPD [Franz MUENTEFERING]
Political pressure groups and leaders:	other: business associations and employers' organizations; religious, trade unions, immigrant, expellee, and veterans groups
International organization participation:	ADB (nonregional member), AfDB (nonregional member), Arctic Council (observer), Australia Group, BIS, BSEC (observer), CBSS, CDB, CE, CERN, EAPC, EBRD, EIB, EMU, ESA, EU, FAO, G-20, G-5, G-7, G-8, G-10, IADB, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt, ICRM, IDA, IEA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, IMSO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, IPU, ISO, ITSO, ITU, ITUC, MIGA, NAM (guest), NATO, NEA, NSG, OAS (observer), OECD, OPCW, OSCE, Paris Club, PCA, Schengen Convention, SECI (observer), UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNIFIL, UNMIL, UNMIS, UNOMIG, UNRWA, UNWTO, UPU, WADB (nonregional), WCO, WEU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO, ZC
Diplomatic representation in the US:	chief of mission: Ambassador Klaus SCHARIOTH chancery: 4645 Reservoir Road NW, Washington, DC 20007 telephone: [1] (202) 298-4000 FAX: [1] (202) 298-4249 consulate(s) general: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco
Diplomatic representation from the US:	chief of mission: Ambassador (vacant); Charge d'Affaires John KOENIG embassy: Pariser Platz 2, 10117 Berlin; note - new embassy opened 4 July 2008 mailing address: PSC 120, Box 1000, APO AE 09265, Clayallee 170, 14195 Berlin telephone: [49] (030) 2385174 FAX: [49] (030) 8305-1215 consulate(s) general: Duesseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich
Flag description:	three equal horizontal bands of black (top), red, and gold

Economy - overview:	The German economy - the fifth largest economy in the world in PPP terms and Europe's largest - began to contract in the second quarter of 2008 as the strong euro, high oil prices, tighter credit markets, and slowing growth abroad took their toll on Germany's export-dependent economy. At 1.7% in 2008, GDP growth is expected to be negative in 2009. Recent stimulus and lender relief efforts will make demands on Germany's federal budget and undercut plans to balance its budget by 2011. Strong growth in 2007 led unemployment in 2008 to fall below 8%, a new post-reunification low. This suggested the reforms launched by the former government of Chancellor Gerhard SCHOEDER, deemed necessary due to chronically high unemployment and low average growth, had had the desired effect. The current government of Chancellor Angela MERKEL has initiated other reform measures, such as a gradual increase in the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 67 and measures to increase female participation in the labor market. Germany's aging population, combined with high chronic unemployment, has pushed social security outlays to a level exceeding contributions, but higher government revenues from the cyclical upturn in 2006-07 and a 3% rise in the value-added tax cut Germany's budget deficit to within the EU's 3% debt limit. The modernization and integration of the eastern German economy - where unemployment exceeds 30% in some municipalities - continues to be a costly long-term process, however, with annual transfers from west to east amounting to roughly $80 billion. While corporate restructuring and growing capital markets have set strong foundations to help Germany meet the longer-term challenges of European economic integration and globalization, Germany's export-oriented economy has proved a disadvantage in the context of weak global demand.
GDP (purchasing power parity):	$2.863 trillion (2008 est.) $2.816 trillion (2007) $2.806 trillion (2006) note: data are in 2008 US dollars
GDP (official exchange rate):	$3.818 trillion (2008 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:	1.3% (2008 est.) 2.5% (2007 est.) 3% (2006 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP):	$34,800 (2008 est.) $34,900 (2007 est.) $34,000 (2006 est.) note: data are in 2008 US dollars
GDP - composition by sector:	agriculture: 0.9% industry: 30.1% services: 69% (2008 est.)
Labor force:	43.62 million (2008 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:	agriculture: 2.4% industry: 29.7% services: 67.8% (2005)
Unemployment rate:	7.9% note: this is the International Labor Organization's estimated rate for international comparisons; Germany's Federal Employment Office estimated a seasonally adjusted rate of 10.8% (2008 est.)
Population below poverty line:	11% (2001 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:	lowest 10%: 3.2% highest 10%: 22.1% (2000)
Distribution of family income - Gini index:	27 (2006)
Investment (gross fixed):	18.9% of GDP (2008 est.)
Budget:	revenues: $1.614 trillion expenditures: $1.579 trillion (2008 est.)
Fiscal year:	calendar year
Public debt:	62.6% of GDP (2008 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):	2.8% (2008 est.)
Central bank discount rate:	NA
Commercial bank prime lending rate:	5.96% (31 December 2007)
Stock of money:	NA note: see entry for the European Union for money supply in the euro area; the European Central Bank (ECB) controls monetary policy for the 16 members of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); individual members of the EMU do not control the quantity of money and quasi money circulating within their own borders
Stock of quasi money:	NA
Stock of domestic credit:	$5.081 trillion (31 December 2007)
Market value of publicly traded shares:	$2.106 trillion (31 December 2007)
Agriculture - products:	potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets, fruit, cabbages; cattle, pigs, poultry
Industries:	among the world's largest and most technologically advanced producers of iron, steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery, vehicles, machine tools, electronics, food and beverages, shipbuilding, textiles
Industrial production growth rate:	2.2% (2008 est.)
Electricity - production:	594.7 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - consumption:	549.1 billion kWh (2006 est.)
Electricity - exports:	62.31 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - imports:	42.87 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - production by source:	fossil fuel: 61.8% hydro: 4.2% nuclear: 29.9% other: 4.1% (2001)
Oil - production:	148,100 bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - consumption:	2.456 million bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - exports:	563,400 bbl/day (2005)
Oil - imports:	3.026 million bbl/day (2005)
Oil - proved reserves:	367 million bbl (1 January 2008 est.)
Natural gas - production:	17.96 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - consumption:	97.44 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - exports:	12.22 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - imports:	88.35 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - proved reserves:	254.8 billion cu m (1 January 2008 est.)
Current account balance:	$267.1 billion (2008 est.)
Exports:	$1.53 trillion f.o.b. (2008 est.)
Exports - commodities:	machinery, vehicles, chemicals, metals and manufactures, foodstuffs, textiles
Exports - partners:	France 9.7%, US 7.5%, UK 7.3%, Italy 6.7%, Netherlands 6.4%, Austria 5.4%, Belgium 5.3%, Spain 5% (2007)
Imports:	$1.202 trillion f.o.b. (2008 est.)
Imports - commodities:	machinery, vehicles, chemicals, foodstuffs, textiles, metals
Imports - partners:	Netherlands 12%, France 8.6%, Belgium 7.8%, China 6.2%, Italy 5.8%, UK 5.6%, US 4.5%, Austria 4.4% (2007)
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:	$136.2 billion (31 December 2007 est.)
Debt - external:	$4.489 trillion (30 June 2007)
Stock of direct foreign investment - at home:	$924.7 billion (2008 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad:	$1.36 trillion (2008 est.)
Currency (code):	euro (EUR)
Currency code:	EUR
Exchange rates:	euros (EUR) per US dollar - 0.6827 (2008 est.), 0.7345 (2007), 0.7964 (2006), 0.8041 (2005), 0.8054 (2004)

Telephones - main lines in use:	53.75 million (2007)
Telephones - mobile cellular:	97.151 million (2007)
Telephone system:	general assessment: Germany has one of the world's most technologically advanced telecommunications systems; as a result of intensive capital expenditures since reunification, the formerly backward system of the eastern part of the country, dating back to World War II, has been modernized and integrated with that of the western part domestic: Germany is served by an extensive system of automatic telephone exchanges connected by modern networks of fiber-optic cable, coaxial cable, microwave radio relay, and a domestic satellite system; cellular telephone service is widely available, expanding rapidly, and includes roaming service to many foreign countries international: country code - 49; Germany's international service is excellent worldwide, consisting of extensive land and undersea cable facilities as well as earth stations in the Inmarsat, Intelsat, Eutelsat, and Intersputnik satellite systems (2001)
Radio broadcast stations:	AM 51, FM 787, shortwave 4 (1998)
Radios:	77.8 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations:	373 (plus 8,042 repeaters) (1995)
Televisions:	51.4 million (1998)
Internet country code:	.de
Internet hosts:	22.606 million (2008)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs):	200 (2001)
Internet users:	42.5 million (2007)

Airports:	549 (2008)
Airports - with paved runways:	total: 331 over 3,047 m: 13 2,438 to 3,047 m: 52 1,524 to 2,437 m: 59 914 to 1,523 m: 73 under 914 m: 134 (2008)
Airports - with unpaved runways:	total: 218 1,524 to 2,437 m: 3 914 to 1,523 m: 34 under 914 m: 181 (2008)
Heliports:	28 (2007)
Pipelines:	gas 24,364 km; oil 3,379 km; refined products 3,843 km (2008)
Railways:	total: 48,215 km standard gauge: 47,962 km 1.435-m gauge (20,278 km electrified) narrow gauge: 229 km 1.000-m gauge (16 km electrified); 24 km 0.750-m gauge (2006)
Roadways:	total: 644,480 km paved: 644,480 km (includes 12,400 km of expressways) note: includes local roads (2006)
Waterways:	7,467 km note: Rhine River carries most goods; Main-Danube Canal links North Sea and Black Sea (2008)
Merchant marine:	total: 393 by type: bulk carrier 2, cargo 43, chemical tanker 13, container 284, liquefied gas 5, passenger 5, passenger/cargo 27, petroleum tanker 11, roll on/roll off 3 foreign-owned: 11 (China 2, Cyprus 2, Denmark 1, Finland 4, Netherlands 1, Sweden 1) registered in other countries: 2,998 (Antigua and Barbuda 941, Australia 2, Bahamas 44, Bermuda 22, Brazil 6, Bulgaria 63, Burma 1, Canada 3, Cayman Islands 15, Cyprus 189, Denmark 9, Denmark 1, Estonia 1, Finland 1, France 1, Georgia 2, Gibraltar 129, Hong Kong 6, India 2, Indonesia 1, Isle of Man 56, Jamaica 4, Liberia 849, Luxembourg 5, Malaysia 1, Malta 91, Marshall Islands 235, Mongolia 4, Morocco 2, Netherlands 75, Netherlands Antilles 43, Norway 1, NZ 1, Panama 44, Portugal 20, Russia 1, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 3, Singapore 24, Slovakia 3, Spain 5, Sri Lanka 5, Sweden 5, Turkey 1, UK 76, US 5) (2008)
Ports and terminals:	Bremen, Bremerhaven, Duisburg, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Lubeck, Rostock, Wilhemshaven

Military branches:	Federal Armed Forces (Bundeswehr): Army (Heer), Navy (Deutsche Marine, includes naval air arm), Air Force (Luftwaffe), Joint Support Services (Streitkraeftbasis), Central Medical Service (Zentraler Sanitaetsdienst) (2009)
Military service age and obligation:	18 years of age (conscripts serve a 9-month tour of compulsory military service) (2004)
Manpower available for military service:	males age 16-49: 19,594,118 females age 16-49: 18,543,955 (2008 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:	males age 16-49: 15,747,493 females age 16-49: 14,899,416 (2009 est.)
Manpower reaching militarily significant age annually:	male: 431,508 female: 409,111 (2009 est.)
Military expenditures:	1.5% of GDP (2005 est.)

Disputes - international:	none
Illicit drugs:	source of precursor chemicals for South American cocaine processors; transshipment point for and consumer of Southwest Asian heroin, Latin American cocaine, and European-produced synthetic drugs; major financial center

---

Sample Mittagessen Menu Fleischbrühe (clear soup) Rollmops (rolled herring fillets) Königsberger klopse (meatballs in cream sauce) Sauerkraut Armer ritter (German French toast, literally "poor knight") Cheese and crackers Cookie platter with coffee

Recipes

Weisse Bohnensuppe (White Bean Soup)
Bratwurst (Sausage)
Kartoffelknödeln (Potato Dumplings)
Rye Bread
Spargelgemuse (Fresh Asparagus)
Apfelpfannkuchen (Apple Pancakes)
Lebkuchen (Cookies)
Apfelschörle (Sparkling Apple Drink)
Glühwein (Non-alcoholic Drink)
Soft Pretzels
Red Coleslaw

Geographic Setting and Environment

Germany is located in Western Europe. The topography of the country is varied, and includes regions of deep forest and high mountains, as well as a wide valley surrounding the Rhine, Germany's largest river. The highest mountain peak, the Zugspitze, lies on the border with Austria. Less than 3 percent of Germans are farmers, and the country must import much of its food. Apples, pears, cherries, and peaches, as well as grapes for wine production, are important crops in Germany.

History and Food

Food has always been a major part of German culture. Even the well-known German fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, makes reference to food. Hansel and Gretel, brother and sister, discover a house in the forest made of gingerbread and candies. King Frederick II (King Frederick the Great, 1712–1786) introduced the potato, a staple in the German diet. He gave away seed potatoes and taught the people how to grow them. But wars caused food shortages and hardship twice during the twentieth century. After the Germans lost World War I (1914–18), food was scarce and soldiers trying to get home were starving. After World War II (1939–1945), the country had even less food available, but this time nations that had defeated Germany, including the United States, helped to feed the Germans and rebuild the country. In 1949 after World War II, Germany was divided into East Germany and West Germany. This division caused the country's two halves to develop different styles of cooking. East Germany, closely associated with its neighbor, Russia, took on a more Russian style of cooking. West Germans continued the traditional German cuisine.

There are also differences in cooking style between the northern and southern Germany, similar to the northern and southern styles of cooking in the United States. In the north, restaurants in Hamburg and Berlin might feature aalsuppe (eel soup) or eintopf (seafood stew). Soups of dried beans, such as weisse bohnensuppe (white bean soup) are also popular. In the center of the country, menus include breads and cereals made with buckwheat and rye flour. A favorite dish is birnen, bohnen und speck (pears, green beans, and bacon). In the middle of the country, a region near the Netherlands known as Wesphalia is famous for spargel (asparagus), especially white asparagus, and rich, heavy pumpernickel bread. Westphalian ham, served with pungent mustard, is popular with Germans worldwide.

Frankfurt, located in the south, is the home of a sausage known as Wüstchen. This sausage is similar to the U.S. hot dog, sometimes called a "frankfurter" after the German city. In the south, a dish mysteriously called Himmel und erde (Heaven and Earth) combines potatoes and apples with onions and bacon. The southern region of Bavaria features rugged mountains and the famous Black Forest. Black Forest cherry cake and tortes, as well asKirschwasser, a clear cherry brandy, are two contributions from this area. Spätzle (tiny dumplings) are the southern version of knödel (potato dumplings) of the north. Lebkuchen is a spicy cookie prepared especially during the Christmas season. East and West Germany were reunited in the early 1990s, but Germans continue to cook according to their region.

Foods of the Germans

Germans tend to eat heavy and hearty meals that include ample portions of meat and bread. Potatoes are the staple food, and each region has its own favorite ways of preparing them. Some Germans eat potatoes with pears, bacon, and beans. Others prepare a special stew called the Pichelsteiner, made with three kinds of meat and potatoes. Germans from the capital city of Berlin eat potatoes with bacon and spicy sausage. Sauerbraten is a large roast made of pork, beef, or veal that is popular throughout Germany, and is flavored in different ways depending on the region. In the Rhine River area, it is flavored with raisins, but is usually cooked with a variety of savory spices and vinegar. Fruit (instead of vegetables) is often combined with meat dishes to add a sweet and sour taste to the meal. Throughout Germany desserts made with apples are very popular.

Knödel, or dumplings, accompany many meals, especially in the north. In the south, a tiny version called spätzle is more common. Knödel may be made either of mashed potatoes or bread (or a mixture of both), and are either boiled or fried. Germans enjoy bread with every meal, with rye, pumpernickel, and sourdough breads more common than white bread. Soft pretzels can be found almost anywhere. Spargel (asparagus) served with a sauce or in soup is popular in the spring.

See Weisse Bohnensuppe (White Bean Soup) recipe.

See Bratwurst (Sausage) recipe.

See Kartoffelknödeln (Potato Dumplings) recipe.

See Rye Bread recipe.

See Spargelgemuse (Fresh Asparagus) recipe.

See Apfelpfannkuchen (Apple Pancakes) recipe.

Food for Religious and Holiday Celebrations

Oktoberfest is the German festival of October. It is held, not in October but during the last week of September in Munich. In late summer or early fall in the United States, many cities stage Oktoberfests to celebrate German culture, especially German beer. At German Oktoberfests, beer is traditionally drunk from a large, decorated stone mug called a Bier Stein (beer stein). Germany has more than 1,200 breweries, making over 5,000 different kinds of beer.

For Christmas, cut-out honey cakes called Lebkuchen are baked in squares, hearts, semicircles, or little bear shapes, iced, and decorated with tiny cutouts of cherubs (angels) and bells. One large or five to seven small cakes are then tied together with a bright ribbon and presented by a young lady to a young man of her choice on Christmas Day. Springerle (cookies), marzipan candies, and Stollen (a type of coffeecake with candied and dried fruit) are also popular Christmas desserts. To accompany the cookies, Germans drink Glühwein, a type of mulled wine. A favorite drink with teenagers is Apfelschörle, a sparkling fruit juice. A traditional Christmas dinner is roast goose with vegetables and Kartoffelknödeln (potato dumplings).

See Lebkuchen recipe.

See Apfelschörle recipe.

See Glühwein (Non-alcoholic Drink) recipe.

Mealtime Customs

When eating out in Germany, it is polite to have both hands above the table at all times, but elbows should not rest on the table. It is also considered impolite to leave food on a plate. Waiters expect a 5 to 10 percent tip. An imbiss is a food stand that may serve bratwurst or other fast foods. Another type of restaurant is the bierhall, which commonly serves bratwursts, accompanied by beer.

Breakfast, or früstück, consists of rolls with jam, cheese, eggs, and meat. Coffee or tea may also be served. The zweites früstück (literally second breakfast) is a mid-morning snack eaten at work or school. Students may have belegtes brot (literally covered bread), a small sandwich of meat or cheese, and a piece of fruit. Germans eat their big meal of the day, mittagessen, around noon or later, sometimes lasting two hours. The meal almost always begins with suppe (soup), and several more courses follow (see sample menu). In the afternoon, kaffee (snack with coffee) is often served, consisting of pastries and cakes. Abendbrot (supper, literally "bread of the evening") is a lighter meal than lunch, usually offering an open-faced sandwich of bread with cold cuts and cheese, eaten with a knife and fork, and perhaps some coleslaw or fruit. Pretzels and sweets may be enjoyed, especially by children, any time during the day.

See Soft Pretzels recipe.

See Red Coleslaw recipe.

Politics, Economics, and Nutrition

Many Germans have begun to modify their eating habits to lower their calorie and cholesterol intake. Since the unification of East and West Germany in the 1990s, the government has faced the challenge of bringing the living conditions in the former East Germany up to the standard found in the former West Germany. Upgrading housing, schools, and utilities will continue after 2001. Despite unequal living conditions, Germans in all parts of the country are well nourished. In fact, most German children have enough to eat.

Further Study

Books

Einhorn, Barbara. West German Food and Drink. New York: Bookwright Press, 1989.

Hazelton, Nika Standen. The Cooking of Germany. New York: Time-Life Books, 1969.

Hirst, Mike. Germany. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 2000.

Loewen, Nancy. Food In Germany. Vero Beach: Rourke Publications, 1991.

Parnell, Helga. Cooking the German Way. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1988.

Scharfenberg, Horst. The Cuisines of Germany:Regional Specialties and Traditional Home Cooking. New York: Poseidon Press, 1989.

Web Sites

German Tourism. [Online] Available http://www.deutschland-tourismus.de (accessed January 31, 2001).

Films

Hansel and Gretel, prod. by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, and dir. by Len Talan, 84 min., Cannon Films, Inc., 1988, videocassette.

---

Germany's approach to wine is somewhat different from that of other European countries like France and Italy because Germans aren't as focused on wine-the simple fact is that Germans prefer beer. In fact, German per capita wine consumption is about one third of that of either France or Italy. Yet Germany is considered a negative producer because it consumes more wine than it makes, whereas Italy and France produce more wine than they drink. The cool climate in Germany makes it overwhelmingly a white-wine producer (and all their best wines are white) because red grapes don't ripen well under such conditions. The main grape varieties for white wines are riesling müller-thurgau, and sylvaner. Other white varieties include bacchus, ehrenfelser, elbing, faber, gewürztraminer, Gutedel (chasselas), huxelrebe, kerner, morio-muskat, optima, ortega, Rülander (pinot gris), scheurebe and Weissburgunder (pinot blanc). The main red varieties are portugieser, Spätburgunder (pinot noir), and Trollinger (schiava). Riesling is by far the star of the German wines. Germany's approach to promoting wine quality is different from other appellation systems, such as France's appellation d'origine contrôlée and Italy's denominazione di origine controllata. Appellations in other countries are geographic in nature and have specific regulations controlling each area. Germany, however, chose to base its wine quality on levels of ripeness and sweetness of the grapes. The focus on sugar content embodies the theory that grapes with higher sugar levels are riper and therefore yield richer wines with deep colors, intense flavors, and opulent bouquets. The German wine laws adapted in 1971 set up three categories for defining the quality of German wines. deutscher tafelwein (dtw) is the lowest-quality level followed by qualitätswein bestimmter anbaugebiet (QbA)-"quality wine from a specified region"-and the top level, qualitätswein mit prädikat (QmP)-"quality wine with distinction." Within the premier QmP category, there are six subcategories that ranked from lowest to highest: kabinett, spätlese, auslese, beerenauslese, eiswein and trockenbeerenauslese. Chaptalization (the addition of sugar) is allowed for DTW and QbA wines but not for QmP wines. It's one of the major differences between the quality levels-most grapes with enough natural sugar are reserved for QmP wines. The addition of sugar, which is converted into alcohol during fermentation, allows producers to reach the required minimum alcohol levels for a DTW or QbA wine. If a quality wine (QbA or QmP) passes all its requirements, an amtliche prüfungsnummer (official test number) is assigned. Abbreviated as A.P.Nr., this number is printed on the label, along with name of the anbaugebiet. Additional information may be printed on a quality-wine label if other requirements are met. For instance, the name of the grape variety can be included if 85 percent of the grapes used in the wine are of one variety. Compared to French and Italian wines, those from Germany are generally lower in alcohol (ranging from about 81⁄2 to 11 percent) and usually contain at least some residual sugar. The higher-quality wines-such as Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein, and Trockenbeerenauslese-are quite sweet. Recently, there's been a trend toward making more of the DTW, QbA, and Kabinett wines in a less sweet style-either trocken (dry) or halbtrocken (half-dry). With the 2000 vintage, Germany introduced two new terms associated with dry varietal wines-"Classic" and "Selection." This effort is meant to simplify information to consumers and encourage the making of higher-quality dry wines. Classic wines are above average in quality and dry and are made from a traditional grape variety, such as Riesling, Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, or Spätburgunder. Classic wines contain a Classic logo and contain the name of the producer and winegrowing region but no vineyard names. Selection wines have to meet additional standards like using grapes from vineyards with lower yields, that are hand harvested (instead of mechanically), and that originate from an einzellage (individual vineyard site), which is used on the label. Selection wines theoretically are of higher quality and less available because of these added criteria. Though Germany's appellation system isn't based on it, geography does come into play. The top two categories, QbA and QmP, must come from specific growing areas. Germany has developed a structure for defining the growing areas-from large general regions to specific vineyard sites. A large general growing region for quality wines is called an anbaugebiet. There are now thirteen of these regions, and their regional name is required on labels of quality wines (QbA and QmP). German law established eleven of these Anbaugebiete in 1971 in an effort to meet European Common Market rules. The original eleven Anbaugebiete are ahr, baden, franken, hessische bergstrasse, mittelrhein, mosel-saar-ruwer, nahe, rheingau, rheinhessen, pfalz and württemberg. Two more Anbaugebiete have been added from the former East Germany-saale-unstrut and sachsen. Except for Saale-Unstrut and Sachsen, all of Germany's primary growing regions are located along the Rhine River or one of its tributaries. Each Anbaugebiet may be further divided into bereiche (districts), grosslagen (general sites), and einzellagen (individual sites or vineyards). An Einzellage could be compared to a specific grand cru or premier cru vineyard site in France's burgundy region that's recognized for a history of producing high-quality wines. There are about 2,600 Einzellagen throughout Germany. The names of specific towns and villages with decade-old reputations for wine-producing prowess are also important in the world of German wines. On German wine labels, the name of the town or village (often appended with an er, which converts it to an adjective) precedes the name of the grosslage or einzellage. For example, the Einzellage named Mäuerchen associated with the village named Geisenheim appears on the label as "Geisenheimer Mäuerchen," while the Grosslage named Auflangen associated with the town of Nierstein appears as "Niersteiner Auflangen." If an Einzellage is classified as an orsteil it doesn't need the nearest village's name.

Magic & Witchcraft

For an account of the magical beliefs of the early Teutonic peoples, see the entry on Teutons. Magic as formulated and believed in by the Germans in the Middle Ages bears, along with traces of its unmistakable derivation from the ancient Teutonic religion, the impress of the influence brought by the natural characteristics of the country upon the mind of its inhabitants.

Deep forests, mountains, limitless morasses, caverned rocks, and springs all helped to shape the imagination which may be traced in Teutonic mythology, and later in aspects of magic and in Christian fears of witchcraft, which first arose in Germany and obtained ready credence there.

As the clash and strife of Teuton and Roman, of Christian and others left records in folklore and history, they have also characterized the magical belief of the Middle Ages. Earlier monkish legends are replete with accounts of magic and sorcery, indicating how ancient deities became evil following the introduction of the newer religion. Miracles were recounted in which these villians were robbed of all power in the name of Christ, or before some blessed relic, then chained and prisoned beneath mountain, river, and sea in eternal darkness. At the same time, tales were told of how misfortune and death were the consequence to those who still might follow the outcast gods.

Again, the sites and periods of the great religious festivals of the Teutons were perpetuated in those localities said to be the place and time of the witches' sabbat and other mysterious meetings and conclaves. Mountains especially retained this character. The Venusberg, the Horselberg, and Blocksberg now became the devil's realm and an abode of the damned. Chapels and cathedrals were full of relics to exorcise the spirits of evil, along with the bells that had to be blessed, as ordained by the Council of Cologne, in order that "demons might be affrighted by their sound, calling Christians to prayers; and when they fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure; that the destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be averted, and the spirits of the storm defeated."

Storms were considered to be the work of the devil, or the conjuration of his followers. The trampling heard was thought to be his fury, his fiery train above the tossing forests or holy spires. In that way, Odin and his associated deities transformed.

The Valkyries, the Choosers of the Slain, riding to places of battle, became the medieval witches riding astride broomsticks on their missions of evil in much the same manner. Castles of flames, where the devil held wild revels; conclaves of corpses revivified by evil knowledge; unearthly growths, vitalized by hanged humans' souls, springing to life beneath gallows and gibbets; little people of the hills, malicious spirits, with their caps of mist and cloaks of invisibility. It was possible to trace the origins of the belief in dire consequences from these stories. For those who believed in magic were doomed as the pagan and Christian stories of the Middle Ages merged to form one myth.

Witchcraft was first derided as a delusion by church leaders. Belief in it was forbidden by some of the earlier councils. It was in the fourteenth century in the form of sorcery (malevolent magic), and then in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as witchcraft that it attained prominence. This was especially true when the practice of witchcraft was declared a crime in the eyes of the church (heresy and apostasy) in 1484—a crime punishable by confiscation and death. In their deliberation on witchcraft the inquisitors first systematized and formulated an understanding of black magic. Under such authority, belief in black magic flourished, filling people with either an outright fear or unholy curiosity.

Once placed on the books, the motives for charging a person with sorcery or witchcraft were numerous. In addition to the care for their souls, individuals otherwise involved in personal feuds, political enmities, and religious conflict, not to mention rulers facing empty treasuries, found the charges of black magic an unfailing and sure means of achieving their ends. For several centuries, the charges were hurled at high and low. Death was the consequence.

The Council of Constance (1414) began with its proscription of the doctrines of Wyclif and the burning of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. Less known, at this time, too, a multivolume work was published by one of the inquisitors, called the Formicarium, a comprehensive list of the sins against religion. The fifth volume contained an account of sorcery. The list of crimes accomplished by witches was also detailed: second sight, the ability to read secrets and foretell events; the power to cause diseases and death by lightning and destructive storms; the ability to transform themselves into beasts and birds; and powers to bring about illicit love or barrenness of living beings and crops. Finally, it detailed their enmity against children and practice of devouring them (a crime often brought against socially proscribed groups).

Witchcraft Persecutions

Papal bulls appeared for the appointment of inquisitors, free of any interference by the civil authorities. The emperor and reigning princes took them under their protection. The persecutions rose to level unparalleled in other countries until the following century. Hundreds of alleged witches were burned in a few years. Immediately after the redefinition of witchcraft in 1484, two inquisitors, Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, compiled the Malleus Maleficarum (first published in 1486), a complete system of witchcraft, along with a detailed method of how to prove any accused capable and guilty of any and every crime.

Persecutions in Germany were intermittent throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Germany was more concerned with the split brought about by the activity of reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin. Still persecution broke out with renewed vigor in the seventeenth century stimulated by the increasing strife between Catholics and Protestants. The country had also been devastated by wars, plague, and famine. Two cities in particular, Bamberg and Würzburg, attained notoriety for trials and the number of victims.

In Bamberg, Prince-Bishop George II, and his suffragan Frederic Forner, prosecuted the holy inquisition so intensely that between the years 1625 and 1630 over 900 trials took place, and approximately 600 people were burned. Confessions were extracted from the victims under extreme torture. Rich and poor were gathered into the jails—often to such a degree that names were never taken nor recorded. The prisoners were only noted anonymously as numbers.

In other parts of Germany, Lutheranism was gaining ground. Here the charge of sorcery was brought against its followers. Protestants had no disagreement with Roman Catholics on the issue of witchcraft. At Würzburg, the bishop, Philip Adolph, in 1623, did not prosecute them openly, but nevertheless acted against the accused. In Eberhard David Hauber's Bibliotheca, Actaet Scripta Magica (1738-45) is a list of 29 burnings from the 1620s. Each burning consisted of several victims, the numbers ranging from two up to ten or more, which included old men and women; little girls and boys and infants; noble ladies; washerwomen; vicars; canons; singers and minstrels. Also among the accused were Bannach, a senator; a wealthy man; a keeper of the pot-house; the bishop's own nephew and page; a huckster; and a blind girl.

At Würzburg, in 1749, the last trial for witchcraft took place. Maria Renata of the Convent of Unterzell was condemned and burned in June that year for consorting with the devil and for being the focus of bewitchments and other infernal practices.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, disbelief in the truth of witchcraft and criticism of the wholesale burnings began to be heard, although earlier than this some had dared to speak against the injustice and ignorance. Before 1593, Cornelius Saos, a priest in Mainz, had stated his doubt of the whole proceedings, but suffered for his recklessness. Johann Weyer, physician to the Duke of Cleves, Thomas Erast, another physician, Adam Tanner, a Bavarian Jesuit, and Frederick Spree, also a Jesuit, all attempted to put forward rational views about witchcraft persecution.

Alchemy and Occultism

Alchemy, one medieval form of Gnosticism, was seen as operating from the realm of magic. Many believed it was satanic in origin. Though few were charged unless caught in fraud for trying to make gold, alchemists were liable to the charge of sorcery and the death penalty if found guilty. Yet alchemy attracted emperors and princes who took up the study themselves, or, more frequently who hired well-known practitioners of the art. For example, Joachim I had Johannes Trithemius as teacher of astrology and "defender of magic," and the Emperor Rudolph employed Michael Maier as his physician.

Germany has supplied numerous names famous for their discoveries in magic—men who were open to suspicion because of their philosophical pursuits. Among those were Paracelsus —who in his search for the elixir of life discovered laudanum, a form of opium distilled from poppies; Cornelius Agrippa; Basil Valentine, prior and chemist; Henry Khunrath, physician and philosopher; and a host of students, all searching for the mysteries of life, the innermost secrets of nature.

Some people believed the activities of these men to be nothing more than pacts with the devil. The knowledge that the al-chemists gained could be acquired only by evil means. Religious people reasoned that the soul of the magician was the price promised and demanded by the Evil One. These myths and imaginings centered around one magician especially, and in the Faust legend we may find the general attitude and belief of the Middle Ages regarding the interaction of learning and supernatural beliefs.

Mystical Societies

While the alchemist conducted rudimentary scientific research, they were Gnostic mystics, as their writings testify. Their work fits into the larger Gnostic world whose exponents were Rosicrucians and theosophists. Among the more notable mystics was the shoemaker, Jakob Boehme, the son of peasants.

During the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), many preachers, seers, and fanatics appeared, exhorting and prophesying. It is believed the condition of the country contributed towards producing the hallucination and hysteria. Reportedly there are accounts of ecstatics absorbed in supernatural visions, such as Anna Fleischer of Freiburg, and Christiana Poniatowitzsch, who traveled throughout Bohemia and Germany relating her visions and prophesing.

At the end of the seventeenth century the old tenets of magic were undergoing a gradual change, except alchemy. The Gnostic magical beliefs found new expression in secret societies, many of which were founded on those of the Middle Ages. Freemasonry —whose beginnings are attributed by some to a certain guild of masons banded together for the building of Strasburg Cathedral, but by other authorities to Rosicrucianism—formed the basis and pattern for many other secret societies.

In the eighteenth century, occultism flourished. There were stories of Frederick William who worked with Steinert in a house specially built for evocations; Schroepfer, proprietor of a café with his magic punch and circles for raising the spirits of the dead; the physiognomist J. K. Lavater, said to have two spirits at his command; the Mopses, a society whose rites of initiation were said to resemble those of the Templars and witches' sabbat in a mild and civilized form; and Carl Sand, the mystical fanatic who killed the dramatist August Kotzebue.

The Illuminati, whose teachings spread to France and underlay the French Revolution, was banded together as a society by Adam Weishaupt and fostered by Baron von Knigge, a student of occultism. This society reportedly originated as an attempt to circumvent the authority of the Jesuits. In its development it absorbed mysticism and supernaturalism, finally becoming political and revolutionary as it applied its philosophies to civil and religious life. Although the Illuminati was disbanded and dispersed in 1784, its ideas continued through other occult groups and reappeared in the democratic wave that swept Europe in the next century.

Mysticism and Animal Magnetism

In the transition from occultism to a more scientific view of the paranormal largely accomplished in the nineteenth century, many occult elements reemerged in the development of animal magnetism and Spiritualism. Some of the significant names of the period included: Johann Heinrich Jung (1740-1817), better known as Jüng Stilling, a seer, prophet, and healer; Franz Anton Mesmer (c. 1733-1815), the discoverer and apostle of animal magnetism; the Marquis de Puységur, magnetist and spiritualist; Madame von Krudener, preacher of peace and clemency to monarchs and princes; Heinrich Zschokke, the Gothic novelist; and Dr. Justinus Kerner (1786-1862), believer in magnetism and historian of two cases of possession and mediumship, the "Maid of Orlach" and Frederica Hauffe, the "Seeress of Prevorst." Also during this period, the poet, playwright, philosopher and novelist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whose own story of Faust made his name synonomous with the struggle between good and evil, showed serious interest in the occult, particularly dreams. His grandfather's dreams seemed to be prophetic, and Goethe served as a witness to the truth of them. Goethe himself was considered psychic.

The cures said to be affected by Prince Hohenlohe, a dignitary of the church occured early in the nineteenth century. He was led to believe in the power of healing through the influence of a peasant named Martin Michel. Most of these cures took place at Würzburg, the scenes of former witch-burnings, and it was reported that more than 400 people, deaf, mute, blind, and paralytic, were cured by the power of prayer.

About this time the case of stigmata with Catherine Emerich, the nun of Dülmen also rose to prominence. Supposedly there was an appearance of a bloody cross encircling the head; marks of wounds on her hands, feet, and side; and crosses on her breast that frequently bled. Again in Germany, around 1918, a twenty-year old Bavarian woman named Therese Neumann underwent a series of ailments following a fall while helping to fight a fire. Within two years she was totally blind and paralyzed. Three years later in 1923, Neumann believed she had a vision of St. Therese of Lisieux, known as the "Little Flower" and her blindness disappeared. Supposedly, she took no food or drink from that time until her death in 1962. It was in 1926 that her stigmata began to appear during a weekly series of visions and trances from Thursday at midnight to early Friday morning. She became a worldwide celebrity. Every Catholic school child throughout the time until her death knew her name as well as those of the saints. In 1932 the Catholic church had attempted to conduct its own investigation of her claims, but could not agree on the terms with Neumann's father. Neither did psychical researchers ever investigate.

In nineteenth-century occultism we find, as in the earlier periods, stories of hauntings and spirits existing side by side with learned disquisitions, such as that on the "fourth dimension in space" by Johann C. F. Zöllner in his Transcendental Physics (1880) and another on the luminous emanations from material objects in Baron Karl von Reichenbach 's treatise on od or odylic force, similar to some aspects of the magic of the Middle Ages.

Spiritualism

It was some years after the original Rochester Rappings in America before the Spiritualism movement surfaced in German-speaking lands. Several intellectual leaders made note of the movement, including the philosopher J. G. Fichte, a proponet of Spiritualism; Edward von Hartmann, author of Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869), who gave the phenomena a place in his philosophy; and Carl du Prel, who, in his Philosophy of Mysticism (1889), held up Spiritualistic manifestations as evidence of a subconscious region in the human mind. Du Prel also founded a monthly magazine, The Sphinx, devoted to the interest of Spiritualism, and Alexander Aksakof, the Russian Spiritualist, published the results of his research in Germany and in the German language because he was not permitted to publish them in Russian. Baron Lazar De Baczolay Hellen-bach, integrated Spiritualist teachings in his hypothesis that no change of world or "sphere" occurs at birth or death, but merely a change in the mode of perception.

Psychical Research and Parapsychology

German psychical research owes much to the work of Baron Albert Schrenck-Notzing, who conducted investigations of such mediums as Eva C., Stanislawa Tomczyk, Franek Kluski, Linda Gazzera, Willi and Rudi Schneider, and Eusapia Palladino. His book Phenomena of Materialisation (London, 1920) reports on the claimed phenomenon of materialization.

The engineer Fritz Grünewald (d. 1925) was a pioneer of scientific testing of mediums, and maintained a laboratory in Charlottenburg, Berlin with various recording instruments. With the British investigator Harry Price, he tested such psychics as Jan Guzyk and Eleonore Zügun.

Other German researchers include Karl Grüber (1881-1927), who investigated the Schneider brothers, Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich (1880-1949), who published a comprehensive study of possession ; Rudolph Tischner (1879-1961); General Josef Peter (1852-1939); Dr. Albert Moll (1862-1939), a psychiatrist who contributed a study on hypnotism ; Max Dessoir, who first used the term "parapsychologie" in 1889; and Hans Driesch (1867-1941). Graf Carl von Klinckowstroem, even though skeptical regarding some psychical phenomena, wrote on water-divining and published a history of the divining rod. In 1874, Alexander Aksakof founded the journal Psychische Studien in Leipzig, published until 1934. It was superseded by the Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie. Another prominent German professor of philosophy, Trangott Konstantin Osterreich was especially well-known for investigating mediums. When the Nazis rose to power, he was stripped of his position and did not regain it until after the war. He died in 1949.

Parapsychology was largely destroyed during the Nazi era, but quickly rose again. Hans Bender, a post-war German researcher, was instrumental in founding the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP-the Institute for Border Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg in 1950, and held the chair for Border Areas of Psychology established at Freiburg University. The institute, located at Wilhelmstrasse 3a, D-79098, Frieburg i. Br. Germany, or through their website at http://www.igpp.de. IGPP was scheduled to be host for the worldwide Parapsychological Association Convention during August of 2000.

One of Bender's more famous investigations involved the Nickelheim Poltergeist that first became apparent in the Bavarian village in 1969. On the windows and doors of the house of a couple who lived with their teenaged daughter, strange knocking sounds began sounding. Further strange occurences, such as stones thrown against the house, dolls and toilet articles flying across rooms, water poured in shoes and eggs broken in visitors' hats, escalated. Soon after, while a priest was blessing the house, teleportation, (the penetration of matter through matter) phenomena began occuring—a stone fell from the ceiling with all of the windows and doors shut. No further reports of later investigation were available.

In 1966, a Department for the Border Areas was established at the university's Psychological Institute and in 1968, the 11th Convention of the Parapsychological Association was held. The institute has conducted investigations into psychokinesis, poltergeist, electronic voice phenomenon, and qualitative and quantitative extra sensory perception research. As of 1991 Eberhard Bauer, was a German historian of parapsychology and managing editor of Zeitschrift fur Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie, the only journal of parapsychology in Germany. He has had the distinction of being the leading European authority on the history of parapsychology and the contemporary scene.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Driesch, Hans. Psychical Research: The Science of the Supernormal. London, 1933. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Du Prel, Carl. Die Magie als Naturwissenschaft. Leipzig: M. Altmann, 1912.

Grüber, Karl. Parapsychologische Erkenntnisse. Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1925.

Gulat-Wellenburg, W. von et al. Der Physikalische Mediumismus. Berlin: Ullstein, 1925.

Hansen, Joseph. Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess in Mittalalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung. Munich/Leipzig: R. Oldenbourg, 1900. Reprint, Aalen: Scientiia, 1983.

Lea, Henry Charles. Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1939. Reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1957.

Moll, Albert. Hypnotism. London: W. Scott, 1901.

Oesterreich, T. K. Possession, Demoniacal & Other, Among Primitive Races, In Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times. London, 1930. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1966.

Reichenbach, Karl von. Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat Light, Crystallization, and Chemical Attraction, in Their Relations to the Vital Force. London, 1851. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1966.

Tischner, Rudolf. Geschichte der Parapsychologie. Titmoning (Pustet), 1960.

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit,
fuer das deutsche Vaterland!
Danach lasst uns alle streben,
bruederlich mit Herz und Hand!
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit,
sind des Glueckes Unterpfand.
Blueh im Glanze dieses Gluekkes,
bluehe deutsches Vaterland!

Written by:August Heinrich von Fallersleben, 1841

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)