Men and Women’s Roles 1801-1900:
Women’s roles in German Society have change drastically since the 19th century. Clip: The Nazis believed that women must be subservient to men, avoid careers, devote themselves to childbearing and child-rearing, and be a helpmate of the traditional dominate father in the traditional family. End Clip [i] Clip: Adolf Hitler had very clear ideas about the role of women in the Third Reich. Women were to be the homemakers of society, cooking, cleaning, keeping house and making themselves healthy and beautiful for their racially pure husbands with whom they would produce numerous children. From school age onwards girls were prepared for their future role and were taught appropriate subjects such as cooking and needlework as well as health and beauty. End Clip [ii] But once Germany was preparing them for war; all the women were required to register for employment, mainly in factories. Since women couldn’t fight in the war, many became nurses for the military and support staff. Not surprisingly women had unequal wages to men and didn’t ever have control and where never leaders.
The Poets and Writers 1701-1800:
Clip: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832, was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science… The most important of Goethe's works produced before he went to Weimar were his tragedies Götz von Berlichingen (1773), which was the first work to bring him recognition, and the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which gained him enormous fame as a writer in the Sturm und Drang period which marked the early phase of Romanticism. End Clip [iii]
Clip: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was a German poet, philosopher,historian, and playwright. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. End Clip [iv] Some of Johann’s most famous plays include, The Robbers, Fiesco, Intrigue & Love, and many, many more.
Clip: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was a German poet, philosopher,historian, and playwright. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. End Clip [iv] Some of Johann’s most famous plays include, The Robbers, Fiesco, Intrigue & Love, and many, many more.
The Rulers and Government 1901-2000:
Clip: Germany is a federal, parliamentary, representative democratic republic. The German political system operates under a framework laid out in the 1949 constitutional document known as the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). Amendments generally require a two-thirds majority of both chambers of parliament; the fundamental principles of the constitution, as expressed in the articles guaranteeing human dignity, the separation of powers, the federal structure, and the rule of law are valid in perpetuity. End Clip [v] One of the most well-known chancellors of Germany was Adolf Hitler who was in office from 2 August 1934 to 30 April 1945. He belonged to the political party National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Clip: Hitler's policies and orders resulted in the death of approximately 40 million people, including about 27 million in the Soviet Union. The actions of Hitler, and Hitler's ideology, Nazism, are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. Historians, philosophers, and politicians have often applied the word evil to describe Hitler's ideology and its outcomes. End Clip: [vi]
Music, Theater and Dance 1901-2000:
Historically Germany has been called Das Land der Dichter und Denker (the land of poets and thinkers). One of the most well-known German Bands whose music is played in the US would be Rammstein. Clip: The band joined in 1994 and their songs are usually in German, but they have also performed songs entirely or partially in other languages such as English, Spanish, French and Russian. End Clip [vii]
Inventions and industry 1801-1900:
The telephone was invented by about five different people, in four different countries, Clip: Although the Scottish-American Alexander Graham Bell is generally credited as the "winner" in the race to invent the telephone in the period between 1850 and 1876, his invention was preceded or paralleled by the German Philipp Reis in 1861 End Clip [viii] After the telephone in the year of 1885, Clip: German mechanical engineer, Karl Benz designed and built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine. On January 29, 1886, Benz received the first patent for a gas-fueled car. It was a three-wheeler; Benz built his first four-wheeled car in 1891. Benz & Company, the company started by the inventor, became the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles by 1900. End Clip [ix]
i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_history#Germany 10/11/2011
ii http://www.historyonthenet.com/Nazi_Germany/women.htm 10/18/2011
iv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schiller#Works 10/18/2011
v http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany 10/18/2011
vi http://www.novaroma.org/via_romana/numbers.html 10/18/2011
vii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rammstein 10/18/2011
viii http://german.about.com/library/blerf_reis.htm 10/18/2011
ix http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbenz.htm 10/18/2011
