How to define Germany?
My dad was a soldier in Germany once. There's one souvernir of his time there that I've admired and loved since childhood. It's a metal miniature of the Dom St. Peter und Maria in Köln. I've inserted how that building survied the heavy bombing during the Second World War.
If anything can define Germany nowadays it's that building and its past. Konrad Adenauer, Germany's first chancellor after that really disastrous war, was once mayor of the town. He was officially dismissed as mayor of his town in 1934 as his bank accounts were frozen and his pension was denied.
Adenaur was even imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934, and after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler of July 1944, he was imprisoned for a second time as a clear opponent of the regime. He was then still seen as one of Germany's leading politicians.
For most of the Weimar Republic, his political party was the third-largest and a bulwark of the Republic. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in early 1933, however, the Centre Party was among the parties who voted for the Enabling Act, which granted legislative powers to Hitler's government.
The Catholic Centre Party dissolved itself on 5th July of the same year as the Nazi Party became the only legally permitted party in the country. After World War II, the old Centre Party was reconstituted as the interdenominational Christian Democratic Union and, in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union.
In those early years of the Federal Republic, the old mayor of Köln who became Germany's first Bundeskanzler quickly switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country to closer relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
[media=https://youtu.be/yLAjwwNwHKo]
If anything can define Germany nowadays it's that building and its past. Konrad Adenauer, Germany's first chancellor after that really disastrous war, was once mayor of the town. He was officially dismissed as mayor of his town in 1934 as his bank accounts were frozen and his pension was denied.
Adenaur was even imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934, and after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler of July 1944, he was imprisoned for a second time as a clear opponent of the regime. He was then still seen as one of Germany's leading politicians.
For most of the Weimar Republic, his political party was the third-largest and a bulwark of the Republic. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in early 1933, however, the Centre Party was among the parties who voted for the Enabling Act, which granted legislative powers to Hitler's government.
The Catholic Centre Party dissolved itself on 5th July of the same year as the Nazi Party became the only legally permitted party in the country. After World War II, the old Centre Party was reconstituted as the interdenominational Christian Democratic Union and, in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union.
In those early years of the Federal Republic, the old mayor of Köln who became Germany's first Bundeskanzler quickly switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country to closer relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
[media=https://youtu.be/yLAjwwNwHKo]
