German History Exam 2

Immanuel Kant

This man was the greatest of the German Idealist thinkers and the author a Critique of Pure Reason. He stressed that the world as it appears to a person is real, but a person’s knowledge of things in this world must be filtered to our minds through our senses. Thus, a person’s mind plays a critical role in influencing the way that a person experiences the world.

Karlsbad Decrees

These were a series of repressive measures passed by the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich. They had as their purpose the suppression of popular ideas such as liberalism and nationalism.

Klemens von Metternich

The Austrian statesman was the organizer of the Congress of Vienna and the architect of the Concert of Europe. He was the foremost conservative of his day, and he sought to prevent any new liberal or national revolutions in Europe.

Liberalism

This is a series of political ideas such as political participation by the people and basic freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. These ideas are the basis of modern democracy.

Nationalism

This is an intellectual movement whereby people have a strong sense of identification with their ethnic group, or nation. It is usually accompanied by the idea that a nation should be a sovereign political entity, or nation state.

Romanticism

This was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated during the late eighteenth century in Europe and reached its culmination in the 1820s and 1830s. It was a reaction and a revolt against the Enlightenment period, especially the rationalism of the Enlightenment and its view of the universe as a static, predictable machine. This movement emphasized emotion and nature, particularly in art and literature. It also emphasized nationalism, and it saw the European peasantry and its folk culture as a repository of national identity.

German Idealism

This was a German philosophical movement in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. It emerged primarily from the works and thought of Immanuel Kant and became closely associated with the Romantic Movement. This philosophical movement stresses that how a person understands an object or phenomenon is not so much dependent upon the thing being perceived. It depends largely upon the person perceiving the object or phenomenon and how their senses perceive the object.

Nation State

This is a political entity that is sovereign and encompasses the physical boundaries of an ethnic group or nation. Throughout European history, these usually came about due to the rise of nationalism and the development of national identity.

Richard Wagner

This man was a great German nationalist musical composer. One of his greatest works is Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Socialism

This is a broad term that actually encompasses many more specific ideologies. It is a broad ideology that emerged in nineteenth-century Europe that sought to guarantee both political equality (as classical liberalism did) and economic equality. Generally, systems based upon this ideology seek to ensure that the means of production are owned collectively or by a central government authority so as to ensure an even distribution of goods and services.

German Customs Union

This was a free-trade zone set up by Prussia and which included German territories not ruled by the Hohenzollerns. This gave Prussia economic dominance within the German Confederation.

Ludwig II

This man was the king of Bavaria from 1864 until shortly before his death in 1886. He was certifiably insane and is most well known for the many fairy-tale castles he built in Bavaria.

Kaiser

In German this word means “caesar” or “emperor” and it was the title assumed by the Prussian kings after the unification of Germany in 1871.

Triple Alliance

This was an alliance put together by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1882 that included Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.

Friedrich Nietzsche

This German philosopher was the foremost figure in the intellectual movement known as irrationalism. He was violently anti-Christian, and he rejected science as a means to attain human happiness. He believed only a small number of “supermen” had the “will to power” and the ability to dominate the rest of mankind. He rejected both liberal democracy and socialism since they assumed equality between all people.

Fischer Thesis

This was a thesis advanced by historian Fritz Fischer in the 1960s that stated that Germany was responsible for initiating World War I. He based this upon Germany’s expensive war aims. However, later historians demonstrated that those goals were made after the war started and that the Allies had expansive war aims as well. This thesis is not widely accepted today.

Revolution from above

This was General Erich von Ludendorff’s term for the various October Reforms that were initiated in October 1918. He believed it was best to initiate such democratizing reforms from the top in order to prevent a Bolshevik-style revolution in Germany.

Spartacists

These were left-wing members of the SPD (Socialist Part of Germany) who were frustrated with the slow reforms of their party in the immediate post-World War I era and left to create the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

Free Corps

These were groups of volunteers financed by industry and trained by the army to assist in suppressing rebellion in Germany after World War I. Many of the volunteers were army veterans.

Article 48

This was an article in the constitution of the Weimar Republic of that allowed the president to rule by decree without the consent of the Reichstag in the case of emergencies. Hitler would later use this article to seize dictatorial power.

Fourteen Points

These were written by the United States President Woodrow Wilson and presented at the Versailles Conference in 1919. These outlined Wilson’s plan to preserve peace in Europe and included an end to secret treaties, recognizing the right to self-government for the new countries that had emerged from the old European empires, and free navigation of the seas.

Kapp Putsch

This was an attempted takeover of the German government by Free Corps units in March 1920. It failed due to general strike.

Locarno Conference

This was a 1925 conference in which France and Germany signed a treaty that guaranteed their boundary. The two countries also agreed not to attack each other in the future.

Ruhr Crisis

This occurred in 1923 when Germany was unable and unwilling to make its reparation payments to France and the French army occupied the Ruhr Valley to ensure the reparations payments were made.

Dawes Plan

This was a plan devised by the United States whereby reparations payments were revised to a more manageable level to prevent further damage to the German economy. Loans were also made to Germany by the United States to bolster the German economy.

Sturmabteilung

This was a German organization, and its English name means Storm Troopers. They were also called the Brownshirts and the SA, and they were a paramilitary group that the Nazis used to terrorize political opponents.

Schutzstaffel

This was a division of the SA or Sturmabteilung, and its name translates as Security Service. It was usually called the SS for short. It initially served as Adolf Hitler’s body guard and later became an elite military force.

Enabling Act

This act was passed by the Nazi-dominated Reichstag in March 1933, and it effectively gave Adolf Hitler dictatorial power in Germany.

Joseph Goebbels

This man was in charge of propaganda for the Nazi Party, and after Hitler gained dictatorial power in 1933, he became Hitler’s minister of propaganda.

Hermann Goering

This man was an early follower of Adolf Hitler and was a renowned flying ace during World War I. Within the Nazi government, he was second only to Hitler and was chief of the Luftwaffe, or air force.

Hans Ulrich Wehler

This person is probably the most well-known German historian of the Sonderweg School. He said the Kaiserreich’s society and government were a carryover from the earlier medieval period. He characterized the Kaiserreich as being governed by “feudal-aristocratic-military elites.”