Assignment#1: German unification against France

While reading chapters 3-5 of the Germany text, I realized a common trend of Germany uniting against France.  Around the second time I read about Germany going against France I realized this must be a prevailing pattern, and kept my eye out for any more references of German unification against France.  And lo-and-behold, France as the common enemy came up a total of 3 times in 2 chapters (chapters 4 and 5).

While uniting against France may not have been the deciding factor (there was still the problem of population increase and food shortages that attributed) to the unification of Germany in 1871, it is still a major factor.

Above is a map of Europe around 1850.  It shows an outline of the German Confederation with all its smaller states.  I thought I should add this map to show how close France and Germany are to each other.  It is also the only other large country besides Russia (also not including the nations that somewhat fall within the German Confederation) that borders the Germanic states.

It all started in the spring of 1813, when Napoleon (the below, left image) lost against Russia.  Before this, France had occupied the German nation, but when Napoleon lost it seems as if the German people lost faith in France.  The text states that it was a shift in mood when “the same people who, fascinated by Napoleon…now responded to the defeat of the Grande Armée in Russia with joy” (105-106).  This led to a rise in propaganda against the French.  In my perspective, it seemed as if the German people, who had before accepted French occupation (possibly because people hoped the French government would fix the famine crisis and more), now saw how weak Napoleon and France were to the Russians.  Therefore, the German people lost faith in France because of their defeat and sought to be rid of the occupation.  This led to a social unity of the German people towards the goal of fighting the French in the Wars of Liberation.

The second instance of Germany vs. France was in 1859 when Napoleon III (the above, right image), Emperor of France, and allied with Piedmont-Sardinia.  This sparked more anti-French hostilities and propaganda’s.  The German people were “seized by a wave of nationalism” and “demanded the creation of a sovereign German nation state that would possess real military power and be able to intervene effectively in foreign affairs” (136).  Under threat of France going against Austria, the German states wanted to unite and gain military power to protect themselves.  Of course, German unification did not happen then either.

Then the time for German unification actually came.  The text attributes the cause of unification by France’s attempt to intervene:

Now it was the aggressive foreign policy tactics of the French that helped to bring about the very German unity that the French government wished to prevent at all costs.  The task of unification could be completed only under pressure from the outside, as Bismarck was well aware, and the desired pressure was provided by Napoleon III. (142)

This pressure was who was going to get the Spanish throne.  The Spanish parliament offered it to a branch of the Prussian rule, which France saw as a threat and Napoleon III sought to stop Prussia from gaining more power.  When Benedetti, the French ambassador, demanded of William I, the Prussian king, that a prince of the Hohenzollern house would not try to become Spanish king ever.  As a result, William I (below image on the left) refused and sparked more French hostility towards the German states.  The message sent to Bismarck (below image on the right) about this meeting and sent an edited version to the press, describing the French as snub and adding fuel to the anti-French belief amongst the German people.  In retaliation to the press release, Napoleon III declared war, just as Bismarck had predicted (143).  This gave the German nation a reason to unite as a single country, although it is not the main contribution to German unification.

 

All in all, unified German pride and nationalism came about a lot against the French.  The German people had the chance to unify under a common goal of writing propaganda’s and antagonizing France.  With the number of times the German states united against the French, it helped fuel the need for a unified country.

Word Count=767

Bibliography:

Schulze, Hagen. Germany: A New History. Trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. Print.

Map of Europe in 1850

Image of Napoleon

Image of Napoleon III

Image of Otto von Bismarck

Image of William I

Blog 3-Martin Luther as a Revolutionist

Martin Luther played a huge role in religious reform, and without him I don’t think such a revolution could have occurred.  It either would have happened much later and/or slower, or there would have been no revolution at all.

This is an image of Martin Luther’s 95 theses (just one page, and very small), which he nailed to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg.  His theses detailed everything that he thought was wrong with the church and that needed changing.  The site of this image also contains a translation of the document.  One of my favorites when I skimmed the list is 86: Again, ``Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?''  Martin Luther pointed out an obvious flaw with using the poor to rebuild a church, who have no money because they have been giving it all to the church in the first place.  It’s like college, when you have to pay the high tuition (in order to get a degree to get a good job to earn enough money for yourself and a family) and then they ask you to donate more money.  The universal question:  Where did those thousands go that I just gave you?

Martin Luther as a Cultural Revolutionary:

He is claimed to be the 1^st person to use the printing press (as a propaganda tool) to gain a larger audience for his ideas.  I think he was the 1^st because others were too afraid to go against the church in fear of being labeled a heretic, sentenced to death, and suffering for eternity in Hell.  He was also probably the first because he challenged the church by going farther and farther every time he was threatened with eternal suffering.

Martin Luther also wrote a lot of crude things of the imagination of the church and religious leaders, such as the pope.  The film stated that his writings were simple, but sarcastic.  I particularly enjoyed the fact that his writings came with images for those who could not read.  These images depicted the pope living in luxury and corruption, and as a servant of Satan (the image in the film of the pope with Satan looked like he was a puppet, not a real person.  I could not find the image, though).

I did find an image of the pope living in the luxury of corruption, which was compared to the image of the life of Jesus Christ.  The image is Christ vs. the Antichrist, meaning the Pope Leo X was not a religious leader for God, but a servant of the Devil or the Devil himself.  The image depicts Christ sitting on maybe a stool or a small chair while someone washes his feet, while the pope is sitting under a canopy in a fancy chair with many other well-dressed people.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lives more poorly, but is an important religious leader and icon.  The pope, on the other hand, as the current religious leader is taking his power too far.

Martin Luther as a Political Revolutionary:

Martin Luther pointed out to German rulers that their money (a high amount that the church demanded of their people in the Holy Roman Empire) was being used to keep the pope in high luxury, something that Martin Luther saw as an unnecessary need for the church.  The above image is of Pope Leo X’s procession with his many attendants and fancy chair.  Luther claims that the pope did not need all those attendants to be the religious leader.  The film claimed that the very air of the pope, the way he sat, etc., showed how much more wealthy he was from the people of Germany by using their money.  Thus the German people had become extremely poor and probably couldn’t sustain lives for themselves.  One man, the pope, had it all, while the thousands he was supposed watch over and protect in the eyes of God was using them to live above comfort.

His claim, sent out in prints across the Germanic states to the rulers, helped boost Frederic of Wittenberg’s thought of restricting money to the church not only for selfish reasons for wanting to keep the money for himself and Wittenberg, but for all of the Holy Roman Empire.  Martin Luther put forth more ideas than just monetary gain for the people.

Martin Luther as a Religious Revolutionary:

He challenged the practice of sentencing heretics, who had been exiled from the church and sent to court for trial, to death by refusing to be considered a heretic without absolute proof.  This is possibly the drive and confidence that helped him to lead his revolution.

Martin Luther also proposed that ordinary people should have control over religion instead of the religious leaders.  The film called this “democratizing religion”, and is something that would allow the people to regain their power and money to lead better lives for themselves rather than being chained by the selfish desires of the church.

Annotations:

Image of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses

http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html

Painter of the Papal Procession

Dish depicting Pope Leo X in procession c.1516

Tin-glazed earthenware, painted

49.6 cm x 6.3 cm

The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

http://idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.com/2010/07/john-henry-newman-and-issue-of.html

Image of Christ vs. Antichrist

http://melandannie.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/luther-the-printing-revolution-and-the-birth-of-mass-media/

Word Count= 899

Blog #2: 15th to 17th Century Germany

The textbook talked about the rights of people living in cities (chapter 2, pg 39).  It didn’t mention which century exactly this custom took place, but the author wrote:

Only a portion of the residents of a city possessed the rights of citizens.  In addition to old established families and local patricians, this ‘honorable estate’ included merchants and members of craft guilds.  Typically excluded from citizenship were such groups as domestic servants, tradesmen’s assistants, journeymen and apprentices, invalids, beggars, knackers (Word says knackers are people who kill old horses or people who demolish buildings), and hangmen, but also members of the nobility and the clergy, civil servants, and Jews.

That seems like a large number of people.  It almost looks like no one was a citizen, especially when the author wrote that some nobles and clergy didn’t have citizenship (although, the clergy members part makes some sense because they have to give up some human rights or desires).  Did not granting citizenship to some nobles classify the differences between higher and lesser nobles?  And then civil servants usually deal with the government or matters of the state.  They are considered higher in society today, so this custom is also difficult to fathom.

Other than that, everything else pretty much makes sense to me.  Merchants and craftsmen often were the lesser of a caste system in many societies.  Apprentices and assistants are lower in status to their masters (I guess that means they never were citizens in the first place, unless they lost citizenship by becoming an apprentice).  Hangmen and knackers kill and destroy things, so they may have been considered “dirty” or “impure” to higher society.  And Jews always got the short stick in history…(slaves in Egypt, the holocaust)

I guess over the centuries social order and hierarchy changed immensely in Germany.  More people received rights, higher positions in status, etc.  Maybe this changed with the changes over who was in charge, especially when it changed from a monarchy to an elected government (especially since civil servants have high status in society today).

The syllabus sheet said to compare and contrast an event in German History to American history:  During the rule under Britain, the American colonists had few freedoms under the high taxes and fervent control.  However, once they revolted and won the American Revolution, they entered into democracy that has lasted for centuries and hasn’t fallen out of practice (unlike in Germany).  I’ve never heard anything about who had rights as citizens in a particular city, but of those who had rights as Americans.  Freedom is often discussed in place of citizenship, and those who had freedom were white people.  Not merchants or farmers or tradesmen.  As long as you were white in early America, you had rights as citizens.  Only until after the civil war and the emancipation proclamation did African Americans receive freedom, but not until then do we ever learn the difference between rights as citizens and freedom in great detail.  Over the course of history, African Americans and women had to protest and work harder for more rights, thus more freedom.

The above image is of Hitler, elected to lead Germany and changed politics in Germany forever.  Hitler pretty much ended democracy in Germany, and any belief that democracy could actually work.  Therefore, historic Germany went from monarch ruled nations (few rights to the people), to a democratic nation (more rights and citizenship for all or most people), and to Hitler’s regime (cut of rights and freedoms of many people not considered beneficial to the Aryan race).  It’s like a roller coaster! Up and down, up and down.

To end on a slightly happier note: Otto III (left) vs. peasant people of the 17^th century (right, a juggler entertaining children).  Otto III was monarch of Germany in the late 900’s, and he is obviously classified as a citizen (seeing as he runs his kingdom).  The image on the right possibly shows no people who hold citizenship (especially the juggler.  He’s classified as a journeyman, and possible doesn’t even stay in one city for very long).

Word count:  681