German history timeline for the citizenship test

For the German citizenship test (Einbürgerungstest) you mainly need to know these dates: 1933 (Hitler becomes Chancellor), 1939 to 1945 (Second World War), 8 May 1945 (end of the war in Europe), 1949 (founding of the Federal Republic and the GDR), 17 June 1953 (uprising in East Germany), 1961 (the Berlin Wall is built), 9 November 1989 (the Wall falls) and 3 October 1990 (reunification). Almost every history question in the official catalogue covers 1933 onwards; earlier events are rarely asked directly but help you understand the answers rather than just memorise them.

The timeline at a glance

1848 to 1918: the freedom movement and the Empire

In 1848 Germany was still a patchwork of separate states, and people in many cities demanded freedom, civil rights and a single German state. The first freely elected National Assembly met in Frankfurt's Paulskirche and wrote a constitution with fundamental rights. It never came into force: the King of Prussia refused the imperial crown, and the revolution was put down in 1849. What survived were the movement's colours – black, red and gold, today the colours of the German flag.

In 1871 the German Empire was founded – the first German nation state, with the Prussian king as emperor and Otto von Bismarck as Chancellor. Only men could vote for the Reichstag. Health, accident and pension insurance also date from this era (the 1880s) and remain at the heart of Germany's welfare state. The First World War (1914–1918) ended in defeat for Germany.

1918 to 1933: the Weimar Republic

On 9 November 1918 the monarchy ended and a republic was proclaimed. Women won the right to vote and stand for election, using it for the first time on 19 January 1919 to elect the National Assembly. It met in Weimar – hence the name Weimar Republic.

Germany's first democracy faced huge problems: the fallout of a lost war, hyperinflation in 1923, the Great Depression from 1929 and a fragmented parliament full of enemies of democracy. West Germany learned from this: the 5% threshold in electoral law is meant to prevent a splintered parliament, and under the Basic Law parties that want to abolish democracy can be banned.

1933 to 1945: Nazi dictatorship, war and the Holocaust

On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor (Reichskanzler). Within months the National Socialists built a dictatorship: other parties were banned, the press was censored and opponents were arrested arbitrarily. There were no more free elections. The Nazi state pursued a policy of state racism: Jews were stripped of their rights and persecuted. On 9 November 1938, Nazis and their supporters destroyed synagogues and Jewish shops across Germany (question 164).

The Second World War began with the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939; more than 60 million people died. In the Holocaust (Hebrew: Shoah) the Nazis murdered around six million European Jews. Sinti and Roma, disabled people, political opponents, gay people and many others were also persecuted and murdered. On 27 January 1945 the Auschwitz extermination camp was liberated – today that date is an official day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism.

On 20 July 1944 Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler with a bomb; the attempt failed. The war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945 with Germany's unconditional surrender (question 153). Careful: Hitler took his own life on 30 April 1945 – 8 May is not the date of his death. More practice: citizenship test questions on National Socialism and World War II.

1945 to 1949: occupation and two German states

After the war the four Allies – the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France – divided Germany into four occupation zones and Berlin into four sectors. Roughly: the British in the north-west, the Americans in the south, the French in the south-west and the Soviets in the east. The Soviet zone roughly matches today's states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen. Japan was not an occupier – a common wrong answer.

When the western zones introduced the Deutschmark in 1948, the Soviet Union cut off all traffic by land to West Berlin. From June 1948 to May 1949, American and British planes kept the city supplied through the Berlin Airlift (question 178).

Two states emerged in 1949:

• 23 May 1949: the Basic Law is proclaimed and the Federal Republic of Germany is founded in the three western zones. Its capital is Bonn; the first Chancellor is Konrad Adenauer.
• 7 October 1949: the German Democratic Republic (GDR, in German DDR) is founded in the Soviet zone. It lasts until 1990.

1949 to 1989: West Germany and East Germany

In the West, the 1950s brought the economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). Short of workers, the Federal Republic recruited guest workers (Gastarbeiter) from 1955 – first from Italy, later from Spain, Greece and Turkey, among others. In 1957 it founded the European Economic Community (EEC) with five other countries through the Treaties of Rome.

In the East, the SED party ruled and the secret police, the Stasi (Ministry for State Security), watched the population. On 17 June 1953 there were nationwide strikes and a popular uprising, crushed by Soviet troops; West Germany marked 17 June as a public holiday until 1990. Because more and more people were fleeing to the West, the GDR built the Wall in Berlin on 13 August 1961. It divided the city for 28 years.

In 1970 Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt in Warsaw before the memorial to the Jewish ghetto uprising. With this gesture (the Kniefall) he asked Poland and the Polish Jews for forgiveness (question 181). His Eastern treaties (Ostverträge) improved relations with Germany's eastern neighbours.

1989/90: peaceful revolution and reunification

In autumn 1989, tens of thousands of people in the GDR, above all in Leipzig, took to the streets every Monday. At these Monday demonstrations they chanted “Wir sind das Volk” (“We are the people”). The GDR changed from a dictatorship into a democracy – a period known as die Wende (“the turning point”). On 9 November 1989 the Wall was opened.

On 18 March 1990 East Germans elected their parliament, the Volkskammer, freely for the first time. On 3 October 1990 the five eastern states joined the Federal Republic (question 204), and East and West Berlin became one city again. This is German reunification. Germany has had its current borders ever since, and the new states became part of the EU. Helmut Kohl is known as the “Chancellor of German Unity” (question 215). 3 October is the national holiday, German Unity Day – see public holidays in Germany. Practise with citizenship test questions on the GDR, the Wall and reunification.

Europe and remembrance today

West Germany was a founding member of the EU (then the EEC) – but not of NATO (joined 1955) or the United Nations (joined 1973). Question 173 tests exactly this. The Maastricht Treaty built the EU on the foundations of the EEC in 1993, euro cash arrived in 2002, and today the EU has 27 members. Reconciliation with France – from the Élysée Treaty of 1963 to Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand remembering the dead together at Verdun in 1984 – stands for the EU's central aim: peace and security.

Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”) set into pavements commemorate individual victims, and 27 January is a day of remembrance. The crimes against Jews are the source of Germany's special responsibility for Israel, which was founded in 1948 on the basis of a UN resolution. Jewish life has existed in what is now Germany for around 1,700 years: the oldest record of Jews in Cologne dates from the year 321. Questions on this, and on the flag, coat of arms and anthem, are under citizenship test questions on history, symbols and remembrance.