Germany A New History Blog

In the chapter I read it was interesting to find out how the German people came about. One big topic that I would like to talk about is how others saw the German people during the Holy Roman Empire stage. I learned that the word German was a way to describe these barbaric people that were coming across the Rhine in the land called Germania. Also, for a number of years these German people didn’t even know that they were being called German. These people never had very much power and were first used as soldier for the Empire. Also, when Germany started to rise and began forming its own identity, there were many parts of Germany that were far behind in population. For example in the reading it say the largest city in Germany had about 40,000 people while in France the largest city they had was about 100,000 people. Along with population I also found it interesting how much of the German population was effected by wars and plagues. In one part I read it said that the Black Plague wiped out about 2/3 of the German population. With the rapid growth of German people during this time and it would have been interesting to see how much quicker Germany would developed.

This image portrays the Black Plague

Another big topic that played a key role in the development of Germany was religion. One of the more important events that happened with the development in Germany was when the pope and emperor split apart from each other. It reminded me a lot of our time now and how religion and politics are somewhat separate from each other. Another big role religion played in Germany’s development was the Protestant and Lutheran religions. With the creation of these two religions it united people of Germany. But, with this came a lot of controversy, which eventually lead up to the thirty years war, which was fought to restore the catholic unity.

This is an image showing the 30 years war

Another part in the book that really interested me was how much the border of Germany changed over time. With all of the wars that were fought through the European development I found it quite confusing and difficult to keep up with the changes that the land dealt with. I would have understood it a little better if the author decided to put more maps in the book so that it was easier to read and find out how much Germany has actually changed overtime.