Timeline Germany 1945-1990
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1945 Jan 1, On
Operation Bodenplatte, German planes attacked American forward air
bases in Europe. This was the last major offensive of the Luftwaffe.
(HN, 1/1/99)
1945 Jan 2, Allies made an air
raid on Nuremberg.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1945 Jan 4, The last German
offensive in Bastogne, Belgium, failed.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1945 Jan 10, Gunther von Hagens,
German anatomist, was born in Poznan. In 1977 invented the process of
plastination in which natural body fluids are replaced by plastic.
(WSJ, 8/5/04, p.D8)
1945 Jan 12, German forces in
Belgium retreated in Battle of Bulge.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1945 Jan 12, Soviet forces began a
huge offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.
(AP, 1/12/98)
1945 Jan 13, The Red Army opened
an offensive in South Poland, crashing 25 miles through the German
lines.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1945 Jan 16, The U.S. First and
Third armies linked up at Houffalize, effectively ending the Battle of
the Bulge. In 1997 Charles B. MacDonald authored “A Time for Trumpets:
The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge.”
(HN, 1/16/99)(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.D11)
1945 Jan 18, The German Army
launched its second attempt to relieve the besieged city of Budapest
from the advancing Red Army.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1945 Jan 18, The Red Army freed
Krakow from Nazi occupation. [see Jan 19]
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.A12)
1945 Jan 19, The Red Army captured
Lodz, Krakow, and Tarnow.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1945 Jan 21, The Nazi Edelweiss
unit participated in a bloody operation against two villages in central
Slovakia as punishment for local support of Soviet-backed rebels.
(AP, 12/19/05)
1945 Jan 23, Helmuth J. Moltke
(37), German general, politician (July 20th Plot), was executed.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1945 Jan 24, A German attempt to
relieve the besieged city of Budapest was finally halted by the Soviets.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1945 Jan 27, The Soviet army
arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland, and found the Nazi
concentration camp and crematorium. It is now believed that 1 million
Jews were murdered here, up to 75,000 Polish Christians, 21,000
Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet POWs.
(www.krakow-info.com/auschwit.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/aqhbc)
1945 Jan 28, The Red Army captured
Klaipeda, the last German-held Lithuanian city.
(LHC, 1/28/03)
1945 Jan 30, The Allies launched a
drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1945 Jan 30, Nazi SS guards shot
down an estimated 4,000 Jewish prisoners on the Baltic coast at
Palmnicken, Kaliningrad. The town was later renamed by the Russians to
Yantarny. Some 7,000 prisoners had been marched 25 miles from
Koenigsberg to a vacant lock factory at Palmnicken where they were
mowed down with machine guns. The prisoners had been vacated from a
network of 30 camps that made up Poland's Stutthoff concentration camp.
90% of the Jews were women from Lithuania and Hungary.
(SFC, 1/31/00, p.C1)
1945 Jan 30, The
German liner "Wilhelm Gustloff" sank in the Baltic Sea between the Bay
of Danzig and the Danish island of Bornholm. An estimated 7000-8000
people, civilian refugees from East Prussia and wounded German
soldiers, drowned in the icy waters. Three torpedoes fired from a
Russian submarine had scored direct hits on the ship. The result was
the largest and most horrible naval disaster of all time.
(NW, 3/18/02, p.11)
http://www.cybercreek.com/cybercity/WWIIps/gu
1945 Feb 2, Karl F. Goerdeler
(60), mayor of Leipzig, "July 20th plot", was hanged.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1945 Feb 3, The Allies dropped
3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. Robert Rosenthal (1917-2007) led 1,000
B-17s in the raid on Berlin. Rosenthal later served as an assistant to
the US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
(HN, 2/3/99)(SFC, 4/30/07, p.B8)
1945 Feb 5, American and French
troops destroyed German forces in the Colmar Pocket in France.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1945 Feb 7, German troops and
allied Slovak irregulars massacred 18 Jewish civilians discovered
hiding in underground bunkers at Ksina, Slovakia.
(AP, 12/19/05)
1945 Feb 8, Allied air attack on
Goch, Kleef, Kalkar, Reichswald.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1945 Feb 9, The German submarine
U-864 with a crew of 73 sank about 2 1/2 miles off Fedje, Norway. It
was on a desperate mission to supply Japan with advanced weapons
technology and carried a poisonous cargo of 70 tons of mercury. Leakage
of the mercury posed a severe threat in 2006 and plans were made to
encase the wreck. In 2007 Norway’s government said it would be buried
in special sand to protect the coastline.
(AP, 12/20/06)(AP, 2/13/07)
1945 Feb 13, Allied planes began
bombing the German city of Dresden. British bombers in Operation
Thunderclap firebombed the city of Dresden, Germany, and 135,000 people
were killed. The Royal Air Force Bomber Command attacked the city of
Dresden at night with raids by 873 heavy bombers. 796 Lancaster heavy
bombers were led by 9 target marking Mosquito light bombers. A look at
aerial maps of the city before and after the terror attacks clearly
shows the large white oil tanks owned by British-controlled Shell Oil.
These tanks remained entirely untouched by the bombardment. In 2003
Frederick Taylor authored “Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945.”
(http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/001.html)(WSJ, 10/22/96,
p.A20)(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A10)(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.T6)(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.T13)
1945 Feb 13, During World War II
the Soviets captured Budapest, Hungary, from the Germans ending a
50-day siege.
(HN, 2/13/98)(AP, 2/13/98)
1945 Feb 14, 521 American heavy
bombers flew daylight raids over Dresden, Germany following the British
assault. The firestorm killed an estimated 135,000 people. At least
35,000 died and some people place the toll closer to 70,000. The novel
"Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut was set in Dresden during the
firebombing where he was being held as a prisoner of war. US B-17
bombers dropped 771 more tons on Dresden while P-51 Mustang fighters
strafed roads packed with soldiers and civilians fleeing the burning
city. In 2006 Marshall De Bruhl authored “Firestorm: Allied Airpower
and the Destruction of Dresden.”
(WSJ, 10/22/96, p.A20)(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A10)(SFEC,
7/27/97, p.T6)(HN, 2/13/99)(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.T13)(SSFC, 12/17/06, p.M3)
1945 Feb 23, Eisenhower opened a
large offensive in the Rhineland.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1945 Feb 23, Turkey declared war
on Germany and Japan.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1945 Feb 26, Very heavy bombing on
Berlin by 8th US Air Force.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1945 Feb 26, Syria declared war on
Germany and Japan. [see Mar 26]
(HN, 2/26/98)
1945 Feb 28, U.S. tanks broke the
natural defense line west of the Rhine and crossed the Erft River.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1945 Mar 1, US infantry regiment
captured Mönchengladbach.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1945 Mar 1, Field marshal
Kesselring succeeded von Rundstedt as commander.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1945 Mar 2, 8th Air Force bombed
Dresden.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1945 Mar 3, US 7th Army occupied
last part of Westwall (Germany).
(SC, 3/3/02)
1945 Mar 5, US 7th Army Corps
captured Cologne.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1945 Mar 6, Cologne, Germany, fell
to General Hodges’ First Army.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1945 Mar 6, Erich Honnecker and
Erich Hanke fled Nazis.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1945 Mar 6, In Holland SS General
Hans Albin Rauter, was ambushed, and his driver and orderly were
killed. Rauter was seriously wounded. SS Brigadefuhrer Dr. Eberhardt
Schongarth immediately ordered reprisals and a total of 263 people were
shot. A Special Court of Justice in the Hague sentenced Rauter to death
and he was executed March 25, 1949. Schongarth was tried by a British
Military Court, found guilty on another war crime charge and sentenced
to death. He was hanged in 1946.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html
1945 Mar 7, During World War II,
U.S. 9th Armored Division crossed the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany,
using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge. This marked the
1st incursion of Allied forces into Germany.
(AP, 3/7/98)(SFC, 4/9/03, p.A16)
1945 Mar 7, Cologne was taken by
allied armies.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1945 Mar 8, The U.S. First Army
crossed the Rhine between Cologne and Coblenz.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1945 Mar 8, 53 Amsterdammers were
executed by Nazi occupiers.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1945 Mar 10, Patton's 3rd Army
made contact with Hodge's 1st Army.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1945 Mar 10, Germany blew up the
Wessel Bridge on the Rhine.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1945 Mar 11, 1,000 allied bombers
harassed Essen with 4,662 tons of bombs.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Mar 11, Flemish Nazi
collaborator Maria Huygens was sentenced to death.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Mar 12, Anne Frank, author of
"The Diary of Anne Frank," died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a
month before it was liberated. When the British arrived in April, they
found more than 10,000 unburied corpses. Some 14,000 of the prisoners
found at the camp died within a few days.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.B8)(HNQ, 4/13/00)(HN, 3/12/01)
1945 Mar 12, In Amsterdam 30
people were executed by Nazi occupiers.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Mar 13, Peru declared war on
Germany.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1945 Mar 14, Chile declared war on
Germany.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1945 Mar 14, A supreme
Lithuanian independence committee was re-formed in Germany. The
committee was 1st formed Nov 25, 1943, in Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/14/03)
1945 Mar 18, 1,250 US bombers
attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1945 Mar 19, Adolf Hitler issued
his so-called "Nero Decree," ordering the destruction of German
facilities that could fall into Allied hands. Hitler ordered a
scorched-earth policy. Hitler had decreed that Paris should be left a
smoking ruin, but Dietrich von Choltitz thought better of his Fuhrer's
order.
(AP, 3/19/97)(HN, 3/19/98)
1945 Mar 22, The US 3rd Army
crossed the Rhine at Nierstein.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1945 Mar 23, Premier Winston
Churchill visited Montgomery's headquarter in Straelen.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1945 Mar 23, British 7th Black
Watch crossed the Rhine.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1945 Mar 24, Largest one-day
airborne drop: 600 transports and 1300 gliders.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1945 Mar 24, Operation Varsity:
British, US and Canadian airborne landings east of Rhine.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1945 Mar 24, Egypt declared war on
Germany.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1945 Mar 25, US 1st army broke out
bridgehead near Remagen.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1945 Mar 26, Generals Eisenhower,
Bradley, and Patton attack at Remagen on the Rhine.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, US 7th Army crossed
Rhine at Worms.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, Syria declared war on
Germany. [see Feb 26]
(HN, 3/25/98)
1945 Mar 27, During World War II,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters in Paris that German
defenses on the Western Front had been broken.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1945 Mar 27, US 20th Army corps
captured Wiesbaden.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1945 Mar 28, Germany launched the
last of the V-2 rockets (buzz bomb) against England.
(HN, 3/28/99)
1945 Mar 30, 289 anti-fascists
were murdered by Nazis in Rombergpark, Dortmund.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1945 Mar 31, Sicherheitsdienst
murdered 10 political prisoners in Zutphen.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1945 Mar, The German submarine
U-96, commissioned in September 1940, was sunk during a US bombing raid
on the port city of Wilhelmshaven. It had gone on 11 patrols in the
Atlantic Ocean before it was sunk. In 1981 Lothar-Guenther Buchheim
(1918-2007), authored his autobiographical novel, "Das Boot," based on
his service aboard the sub. In 1981, the book was turned into an
acclaimed German film starring Juergen Prochnow that detailed the
hopelessness of war and its effect on sailors living in the cramped
confines of their submarine.
(AP, 2/23/07)
1945 Apr 1, Canadian troop freed
Doetinchem, Enschede, Borculo & Eibergen.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1945 Apr 3, Nazis began evacuation
of camp Buchenwald. [see Apr 20]
(MC, 4/3/02)
1945 Apr 4, U.S.
forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.
(AP, 4/4/97)
1945 Apr 4, US tanks and infantry
conquered Bielefeld.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1945 Apr 4, Hungary was liberated
from Nazi occupation (National Day).
(MC, 4/4/02)
1945 Apr 9, The Red Army was
repulsed at the Seelow Heights on the outskirts of Berlin.
(HN, 4/9/00)
1945 Apr 9, German Battleship
Admiral Scheer sank a British aircraft carrier.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1945 Apr 9, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(b.1906), a German Lutheran theologian and antifascist, was hanged by
the Nazis at Flossenburg prison. He had participated in the failed July
20, 1944, plot to assassinate Hitler. A TV documentary on Bonhoeffer
was aired in 2006.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A14)(WSJ, 2/3/06,
p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer)
1945 Apr 9, Hans Oster, German
major-general, spy and participant in the "July 20th plot", was hanged
by Nazis.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1945 Apr 9, Hans von Dohnanyi,
"July 20th plotter", hanged by Nazis.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1945 Apr 9, Wilhelm Canaris,
Admiral, headed Germany Abwehr, was hanged by Nazis.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1945 Apr 10, German Me 262 jet
fighters shot down ten U.S. bombers near Berlin.
(HN, 4/10/99)
1945 Apr 10, In their second
attempt to take the Seelow Heights, near Berlin, the Red Army launched
numerous attacks against the defending Germans. The Soviets gain one
mile at the cost of 3,000 men killed and 368 tanks destroyed.
(HN, 4/10/00)
1945 Apr 11, The Americans
liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Some 250,000
prisoners passed through the camp and 50,000 are known to have died
there. From 1945 to 1950, occupying Soviet forces used the camp to hold
political prisoners.
(AP, 4/11/97)(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.B1)(SFC, 8/3/99,
p.A10)(AP, 6/5/09)
1945 Apr 11, After two frustrating
days of being repulsed and absorbing tremendous casualties, the Red
Army finally takes the Seelow Heights north of Berlin.
(HN, 4/11/00)
1945 Apr 11, The Nazi SS burned
and shot 1,100 at Gardelegen.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1945 Apr 12, Robert Daniell
(1901-1996), British tank commander, entered with his tank crew into
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He found some 10,000 corpses killed
by the guards as the allies approached. Of the remaining 38,500
prisoners, barely a third survived.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.B8)
1945 Apr 12, Canadian troops
liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Westerbork, Neth.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1945 Apr 14, US 7th Army and
allies forces captured Nuremberg and Stuttgart, Germany.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1945 Apr 15, Commenting on the
death of American President Franklin Roosevelt in his Order of the Day,
Adolf Hitler proclaimed: "Now that fate has removed from the earth the
greatest war criminal of all time, the turning point of this war will
be decided."
(HNQ, 10/8/99)
1945 Apr 15, The deadly battle for
Berlin began. The Seelow Heights posed the last natural barrier to
Berlin in April 1945 from an advancing Red Army. The rolling plains and
plateaus of the Seelow Heights were only 35 miles from the German
capital and were well defended. The battle, which raged for a week, was
extremely costly to both sides, leaving some 30,000 Red Army soldiers
and at least 80,000 Germans killed.
(HNQ, 4/16/99)
1945 Apr 15, British and Canadian
troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. It is a
village in west Germany about 30 miles north of Hanover. About 40,000
people were liberated from the camp, although about 13,000 later died
of illness. Overall, about 70,000 people died in Belsen.
(AHD, p.122)(AP, 4/17/05)
1945 Apr
16, After a 2-day fight US troops liberated the German POW camp at
Colditz Castle.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colditz_Castle)
1945 Apr 16, U.S. troops reached
Nuremberg, Germany, during World War II.
(AP, 4/16/98)(HN, 4/16/98)
1945 Apr 17, The US Army raided
factory in Stassfurt, Germany, and found some 1,100 tons of ore, some
in the form of uranium oxide, a basic material of atomic bombs. It was
part of mission Alsos, intended to track down Germany's atomic bomb
project and nuclear scientists. In 1986 Richard Rhodes authored "The
Making of the Atomic Bomb."
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.B4)
1945 Apr 17, 8th Air Force bombed
Dresden.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1945 Apr 17, Hannie Schaft, "Girl
with red hair," was executed.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1945 Apr 17, Walter Model (54),
German field marshal, committed suicide. [see Apr 21]
(MC, 4/17/02)
1945 Apr 20, American forces
liberated Buchenwald. 350 Americans were imprisoned at Berga, a
sub-camp of Buchenwald, following their Dec, 1944, capture at the
Battle of the Bulge. Charles Guggenheim's (d.2002) last documentary
film was title "Berga." [see Apr 10-11]
(WSJ, 5/28/03, p.D8)
1945 Apr 21, Allied troops
occupied a German nuclear laboratory.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1945 Apr 21, Field Marshal Walther
Model, known as the "Fuhrer‘s Fireman," shot himself near Dusseldorf.
Hitler, who called Model "the Savior of the Eastern Front," sent him to
shore up the perceived failings of others and to faithfully carry out
his most ignorant and impossible orders. A sycophant to the end, Model
sent Hitler a note commending his survival of the July bomb plot.
Model‘s army was eventually enveloped in the Ruhr in 1945 and, although
offered terms for surrender, Model chose to commit suicide.
(HNQ, 2/25/00)
1945 Apr 21, Russian army arrived
at outskirts of Berlin.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1945 Apr 22, Hitler acknowledged
that the war was lost. A stenographic record of Hitler’s conferences
with his generals from Apr, 1942, until Apr, 1945, was published in
2003 as: "Hitler and His Generals." It was edited by Helmut Heiber and
David M. Glantz."
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.A1)
1945 Apr 22, Soviet troops
liberated the concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen. Soviet secret police
then used the camp just north of Berlin to imprison many Nazis as well
as critics of the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany after the defeat
of Adolf Hitler's regime. In all, an estimated 60,000 people were sent
to "Special Camp No. 1" in 1945-50. In 2008 researchers finished
compiling a list of 11,890 Germans who died there.
(AP, 4/17/05)(AP, 3/6/08)
1945 Apr 23, The concentration
camp at Flossenburg was liberated.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1945 Apr 23, The Soviet Army
fought its way into Berlin.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1945 Apr 25, Clandestine Radio
1212, used to hoax Nazi Germany, made its final transmission.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1945 Apr 25, During World War II,
U.S. and Soviet forces linked up at Torgau, on the Elbe River, in
central Europe, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
(AP, 4/25/97)(HN, 4/25/98)
1945 Apr 25, Some 318 British
Lancaster bombers dropped 1,232 tons of bombs on Hitler’s alpine
redoubt at Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.G5)
1945 Apr 25, Last B-17 attack
against Nazi Germany.
(HN, 4/25/98)
1945 Apr 28, British commands
attacked Elbe and occupied Lauenburg.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1945 Apr 29, American soldiers
liberated 31,601 in the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp; that same
day, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun and designated Adm. Karl Doenitz
his successor.
(AP, 4/29/98)(HN, 4/29/98)(MC, 4/29/02)
1945 Apr 29, The German Army in
Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Venice and Mestre were
captured by the Allies. In 1956 Norman Kogan, historian at the Univ of
Connecticut, wrote "Italy and the Allies."
(HN, 4/29/99)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)(MC, 4/29/02)
1945 Apr 30, Adolf Hitler (56)
committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun (33), in
his Fuhrerbunker as Russian troops approached Berlin. Karl Donitz
became his successor. Their bodies were cremated and their remains
hastily buried in a shell hole in the Reich Chancellery garden just
hours before Berlin's fall. A few days later a Soviet officer showed
British troops Hitler's probable gravesite. In 1970 Russia’s KGB
ordered Hitler’s remained to be dug up, turned to powder and thrown
into the nearest river. In 1947 Hugh Trevor-Roper authored “The Last
Days of Hitler.” In 1973 Robert Payne authored a definitive biography.
In 1998 Ron Rosenbaum authored "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the
Origin of His Evil." In 1977 Robert G.L. Waite (d.1999) authored The
Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler." In 2002 Ingo Helm made a film for TV
titled "Hitler’s Money." In 2004 the German film “The Downfall”
portrayed the last days of Hitler.
(AP, 4/30/97)(HN, 4/30/98)(HNPD, 4/30/99)(WSJ,
8/31/99, p.A22)(SFC, 10/11/99, p.A24)(WSJ, 7/24/02, p.A1)(SFC, 8/8/02,
p.A14)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.48)(WSJ, 12/29/05, p.D8)
1945 Apr 30, During the final days
of World War II, German female test pilot Hanna Reitsch was ordered to
fly General Ritter von Greim 60 miles to Berlin to personally accept
Adolf Hitler's appointment as Supreme Commander of the German
Luftwaffe. Flying her light plane through heavy Soviet anti-aircraft
fire, Reitsch and her passenger reached Hitler's underground bunker
safely, where they were among the last to see the German dictator
alive. Although both expected to die in the bunker, Hitler ordered
Reitsch and Greim to escape from Berlin to continue the fight. On April
30, 1945, after a harrowing takeoff using a bombed-out street as a
runway, Reitsch evaded Soviet searchlights and fighters to reach
temporary freedom in German-held territory.
(HNPD, 4/27/99)
1945 Apr 30, Red Army opened an
attack on German Reichstag building in Berlin.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1945 Apr 30, The Russian Army
freed the Ravensbrueck concentration camp. They found 3,000 sickly
prisoners who had been unable to make the march north under the SS.
(AP, 4/17/05)
1945 Apr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a
German Evangelical Protestant theologian, was executed a few weeks
before the end of the war. In 1998 Denise Giardina published her novel
"Saints and Villains" that reconstructed his story.
(SFEC, 8/28/98, Par p.20)
1945 May 1, A
day after Adolf Hitler committed suicide, Admiral Karl Doenitz
effectively became sole leader of the Third Reich with the suicide of
Hitler's propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels. Goebbels committed
suicide with his wife and 8 children.
(AP, 5/1/07)(MC, 5/1/02)
1945 May 1, Martin Bormann,
private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escaped the Fuhrerbunker as the Red
Army advanced on Berlin. Specialists later determined that he probably
died in May 1945. The mystery behind his fate was settled in 1972 when
construction workers in Berlin dug up a skeleton. Experts concluded the
remains were Bormann's after a five-month examination that included
making X-rays of the bones, studying the teeth, and using the skull as
a model to reconstruct what its face would've looked like. West German
authorities officially declared him dead in 1973.
(WSJ, 8/30/99, p.A1)(AP, 9/1/09)
1945 May 2, German Army in Italy
surrendered.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1945 May 2, The Soviet Union
announced the fall of Berlin and the Allies announced the surrender of
Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria. The Russians took Berlin
after 12 days of fierce house-to-house fighting and General Weidling
surrendered. Yevgeny Khaldei (d.1997 at 80), soldier-photographer, made
pictures of Soviet soldiers hoisting the red flag over the Reichstag in
Berlin.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AP, 5/2/97) (SFC, 10/11/97,
p.A19)(HN, 5/2/98)(MC, 5/2/02)
1945 May 3, Allies arrested German
nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1945 May 3, German ship "Cap
Arcona" sank and 5,800 were killed.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1945 May 4, During World War II,
German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agreed
to surrender.
(AP, 5/4/00)
1945 May 5, The Mauthausen
Concentration camp was liberated.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1945 May 7, Germany signed an
unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, to
take effect the following day, ending the European conflict of World
War II. After five years, World War II in Europe ended when Colonel
General Alfred Jodl, the last chief of staff of the German Army, signed
the unconditional surrender at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's
headquarters at Rheims, France.
(AP, 5/7/97)(HN, 5/7/98)(HNPD, 5/8/99)
1945 May 7, SS opened fire on a
crowd in Amsterdam and killed 22.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1945 May 8, Germany surrendered
and Victory in Europe was achieved by the allies. Marshal Wilhelm
Keitel surrenders to Marshal Zhukov. The day is commemorated as V-E
Day. President Truman announced in a radio address that World War II
had ended in Europe. In 2004 Max Hastings authored “Armageddon,” an
account of the last days of WW II.
(WSJ, 5/5/95, p.A-12)(AP, 5/8/97)(WSJ, 11/16/04,
p.D10)
1945 May 8, Oskar Schindler gave a
speech and urged the Jews who worked for him not to pursue revenge
attacks. An original list of 1,200 of his workers at the Plaszow
concentration camp was found in 1999.
(SFC, 10/16/99, p.A13)
1945 May 16, The Nazi submarine
U-234 surrendered to US forces at Portsmouth, NH. It had been bound for
Tokyo with 10 containers of uranium oxide. The atomic material ended up
in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.B4)(www.uboat.net/)
1945 May 21, German Reichsfuhrer,
SS Heinrich Himmler, was captured.
(MC, 5/21/02)
1945 May 23, Heinrich
Himmler (44), the head of the Nazi Gestapo, committed suicide while
imprisoned in Luneburg, Germany.
(AP, 5/23/97)(HN, 5/23/01)
1945 May, In Austria US Army
officers and troops plundered a “gold train” on its way to Germany from
Hungary that carried gold, jewels, paintings and other valuables seized
by the Nazis from Jewish families. A 2001 suit filed in Miami said the
army falsely classified it as unidentifiable and enemy property, which
avoided having to return the goods to their rightful owners. The suit
alleged that the US made no effort to return the goods and lied to
Hungarian Jews who sought information about their property after the
war. In 2004 the property was estimated to be worth ten times its
original $200 million valuation. In 2005 the US government reached a
$25.5 million settlement with families of the Hungarian Holocaust
victims for distribution to needy Holocaust survivors.
(AP, 12/20/04)(SFC, 3/12/05, p.A5)
1945 Jun 4, US, Russia, England
& France agreed to split occupied Germany.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1945 Jul 17-Aug 2, President
Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston
S. Churchill (and his successor Clement Atlee) began meeting at the
Schloss Cecilienhof in Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War
II. It re-established the European borders that were in effect as of
Dec 31, 1937.
(WSJ, 5/5/95, p.A-12)(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996,
p.2)(AP, 7/17/97)(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.T6)
1945 Aug 2, The Potsdam
Conference, attended by Stalin, Truman and Churchill, ended.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1945 Oct 14, British Chief Justice
Geoffrey Lawrence was elected president of the Int’l. Military Tribunal
for the trial of war criminals at Nuremberg. Drexel A. Sprecher
(d.2006), a prosecutor during the trial, later edited the official
15-volume work on the 4-year trial.
(http://tinyurl.com/pnk7h)(SFC, 4/11/06, p.B5)
1945 Nov 16, Eighty-eight German
scientists, holding Nazi secrets, arrived in the U.S.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1945 Nov 20, In Nuremberg, Germany
22 out of 24 indicted Nazi officials went on trial (one in absentia)
before an international war crimes tribunal.
(AP, 11/20/08)
1945 Nov 30, Russian forces took
Danzig, and invaded Austria.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1945 Dec 14, Josef Kramer, known
as "the beast of Belsen," and 10 others were hanged in Hameln for
crimes committed at the Belsen and Auschwitz Nazi concentration camps.
(AP, 12/14/05)
1945 Dec 21, Gen. George S. Patton
died at the age of 60 in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car
accident. He was buried at Hamm, Luxembourg. A biography of Patton was
written in 1995 by Carlo D’Este titled: "Patton: A Genius for War." In
1998 Brian Sobel published "The Fighting Pattons." It was a history of
the Patton family.
(AP, 12/21/97)(WSJ, 8/14/98, p.W7)(HN, 12/21/98)
1945 Dec 31, Czechoslovakia began
forcing the German population of the Sudetenland back to Germany.
(WSJ, 11/26/96, p.A15)
1945 Hans Pfitzner composed his
last work: "the Sextet for Piano, Clarinet and Strings."
(WSJ, 7/29/97, p.A12)
1945 Austria retrieved some 18,000
looted artworks from a US Army depot in Munich. The bulk of them were
restituted to former owners over the next 3 years.
(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A20)
1945 The allies settled on the
Oder-Neisse line as the new Western border of Poland. It cut through
the German city of Guben, called Gubin on the Polish side.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.50)
1945 An American air raid
destroyed most of the buildings of Hitler’s "Eagle’s Nest" above the
town of Berchtesgaden in the Alps. The area was used by the Americans
for recreational purposes until it was returned to Bavaria in 1996
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.16A)
1945 Albert A. Hutler (d.1998 at
89) served as chief of the Displaced Persons Section of the US 7th Army
Military Government. He authored "Agony of Survival" in 1988, a
recounting of his efforts to aid the concentration camp survivors.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1945 British currency forged in
Germany, measured by face value, accounted for 12% of all pound
sterling bills. Early this year SS leaders switched their attention to
forging US dollars. Forging operations, using Jewish and other war
prisoners, had begun at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp under SS
officer Bernhard Kruger a few years earlier. Nearly 133 million pounds
was forged during Operation Bernhard.
(WSJ, 1/22/07, p.A1,13)
c1945 Josef Ritter von Gadolla
saved the people, the old town and the square of Gotha by surrendering
to the advancing Americans. He was shot for surrendering without a
fight. His conviction was overturned in 1998.
(SFC, 1/21/98, p.C12)
1945 Volkswagen, under British
army engineer Ivan Hirst (d.2000), turned out 1,785 cars as part of a
20,000 car, war reparations contract with the British army.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.D6)
1945 A US transport train collided
with a trainload of German war prisoners and 102 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)
1945-1950 In 2002 Ruth Gay authored "Safe Among the
Germans," an account of Eastern European Jews in the post-war refugee
camps.
(SFC, 9/19/02, p.D12)
1946 Feb 13, Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, German director, actor, was born.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1946 Mar 30, The Allies seized
1,000 Nazis who were attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1946 Jul 16, US court martial in
Dachau condemned 46 SS to hang for the Malmedy massacre of disarmed GIs.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1946 Aug 29, J.E. Feenstra,
Nazi military police commandant, was executed.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1946 Sep 30, An international
military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders
guilty of war crimes. Ribbentrop and Goering were sentenced to death.
American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn interviewed many of the
participants and in 2004 the interviews were published as “The
Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist’s Conversations with the
Defendants and Witnesses.”
(AP, 9/30/99)(SSFC, 1/30/05, p.A13)
1946 Oct 1, Twelve Nazi war
criminals were sentenced to be hanged at Nuremberg trials-- Karl
Donitz, Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst
Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel,
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1946 Oct 15, Nazi war criminal
Hermann Goering poisoned himself hours before he was to have been
executed.
(AP, 10/15/97)
1946 Oct 16, Ten Nazi war
criminals condemned during the Nuremberg trials were hanged. The
defendants included: Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring, who was
sentenced to death but committed suicide the morning of the execution;
former deputy Führer Rudolph Hess (d.1987), sentenced to life
imprisonment; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, hanged; head of
the armed forces high command Wilhelm Keitel, hanged; writer and
"philosopher" of National Socialism Alfred Rosenberg; U-boat Admiral
Karl Dönitz, 10-year imprisonment; Grand Admiral Erich Raeder,
life imprisonment; Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Shirach, 20-year
imprisonment; procurer of slave labor Fritz Sauckel, hanged; and Alfred
Jodl, chief of staff of the German high command, hanged. The hanging
was badly botched as most Nazis slowly strangle to death.
(AP, 10/16/97)(HN, 10/16/98)(HNPD, 10/20/99)(MC,
10/16/01)
Also hanged were: Hans Frank, Governor-General of
occupied Poland; Wilhelm Frick, Hitler's Minister of the Interior;
Julius Streicher, rabid anti-Semite editor of Der Sturmer; Alfred
Rosenberg, Nazi philosopher and war criminal; Arthur Seyss-Inquart
(54), Nazi leader of occupied Holland; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Austrian
Nazi and SS leader.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1946 Oct 28, German rocket
engineers began work in the USSR.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1946 Nov 6, Sister Maria
Innocentia Hummel (b.1909 as Berta Hummel), German nun and artist,
died. She became famous for her artwork which was used to create the
Hummel figurines beginning in 1935.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Innocentia_Hummel)
1946 Dec 2, The U.S. and Britain
merged the German occupation zones.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1946 Dec 24, US General MacNarney
gave 800,000 "minor Nazis" amnesty.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1946 Geoffrey Barraclough authored
“The Origins of Modern Germany.”
(WSJ, 6/23/07, p.P10)
1946 Hermann Hesse (1877-1962),
Swiss-born German philosopher poet and author, was awarded the Nobel
Prize in literature "for his inspired writings which, growing in
boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals
and high qualities of style."
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1946/)
1946 Heinrich Springer and his son
Axel founded a newspaper in Hamburg that grew to become Axel Springer
Verlag AG, Germany’s biggest and most influential newspaper group.
(WSJ, 10/20/04, p.A1)
1946 In Germany the conservative
Christian Social Union was founded as a more inclusive heir to the
Bavarian People’s Party.
(Econ, 8/18/07, p.43)
1946-1949 Some 12 million ethnic Germans were
expelled from their homes in eastern Europe after WW II.
(Econ, 11/3/07, p.60)
1947 Feb 23, Several hundred Nazi
organizers were arrested in Frankfurt by U.S. and British forces.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1947 Feb 24, Franz von Papen was
sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for war crimes. Pompous scion
of an old aristocratic family, he had become chancellor of Germany in
1932.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1947 Feb 28, Britain and France
signed a 50-year pact to curb Germany.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1947 Feb, In Germany Rudolf
Augstein (23) took over a weekly news magazine from British occupiers
and began publishing Der Spiegel (The Mirror). Augstein died in 2002.
In 1974 Augstein gave Spiegel’s staff half of the company’s shares.
(SFC, 11/11/02, p.A20)(Econ, 1/12/08, p.45)
1947 Jul, A prisoner camp in Bad
Nenndorf, a spa town in northwest Germany occupied by the British after
the war, was closed. In 2005 a Guardian report cited documents recently
released under the Freedom of Information Act that described the
suffering of some of 372 men and 44 women detained at the camp.
(AP, 12/17/05)
1947 Oct 4, Max Karl Ernst Planck
(b.1858), German physicist ( Nobel 1918), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.1101)(MC, 10/4/01)
1947 Nov 16, 15,000 demonstrated
in Brussels against mild sentences of Nazis.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1947 Max Beckmann made his oil
painting "Self-Portrait with Cigarette."
(SFEC, 2/1/98, BR p.6)
1947 Thomas Mann (1875-1955),
German writer, wrote Doctor Faustus. A new English translation was made
in 1998 by John E. Woods.
(V.D.-H.K.p.367-368)(WSJ, 12/26/95, p. A-5)(SFEC,
4/5/98, BR p.6)
1947 Hermann Lenz (1913-1998)
published his first novel "The Silent House."
(SFC, 5/14/98, p.A27)
1947 In Germany Helmut Kohl joined
the Christian Democratic Union.
(WSJ, 1/19/00, p.A18)
1947 Albert Speer (d.1981), German
architect, was tried at Nuremberg as a major war criminal. He had
served as Hitler’s rearmament minister. Speer served 20 years in
Spandau prison and was released in 1969. 6 others were also sentenced
to long prison terms, including Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s former deputy,
who committed suicide in Spandau in 1987. In 2007 Norman J.W. Goda
authored “Seven Prisoners, Four Powers: Tales From Spandau.”
(SSFC, 10/6/02, p.M3)(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P13)
1947 The Organization Gehlen was
founded by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen. Many of his recruits were ex-Nazis. It
later became known as the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s
foreign intelligence service.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.50)
1947 A German neurologist coined
the term prosopagnosia (face blindness), to describe the condition of a
young man who, due to a bullet wound to the head, had lost his ability
to recognize people.
(WSJ, 1/5/07, p.A1)
1948 Mar 6, During talks in
Berlin, the Western powers agreed to internationalize the Ruhr region.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1948 Mar 31, Soviets, in Germany,
began controlling the Western trains headed toward Berlin.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1948 May 4, The Hague Court of
Justice convicted Hans Rauter (SS) of war crimes.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1948 May 25, Klaus Meine, rocker
(Scorpions-No One Like You), was born in Hanover, Germany.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1948 Jun 18, British and Americans
launched a new currency in Germany’s Western zones.
(http://tinyurl.com/8emyv)
1948 Jun 19, The USSR blocked the
access road to West Berlin.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)(DT internet 6/19/97)
1948 Jun 22, On the 7th
anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Russia, all ground traffic to
Berlin was stopped, halting 13,500 tons of daily supplies to Berlin.
Only the air corridors, protected by treaty, remained open.
(http://tinyurl.com/a63oy)
1948 Jun 24, Communist forces with
30 military divisions cut off all land and water routes between West
Germany and West Berlin, prompting the United States to organize the
massive Berlin airlift. Gen’l. Lucius Clay, the local American
commander, ordered the air supply effort.
(AP, 6/24/97)(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A12)
1948 Jun 26, The Berlin Airlift
began in earnest as the United States, Britain and France started
ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin, after the
Soviet Union cut off land and water routes. The Soviets had been
harassing the French, British and American authorities in Berlin for
weeks, trying to force them from the city. Finally, when all surface
routes to the city were blockaded, it became clear that an airlift
through the Allied sectors was the only way to re-supply the 2 million
West Berliners. In spite of the enormous human and financial cost,
“Operation Vittles” supplied food, fuel and hope to beleaguered
citizens until the Soviet barricades were finally lifted on May 12,
1949.
(AP, 6/26/98)(HN, 6/26/99)(http://tinyurl.com/gqhi)
1948 Jul 27, Otto Skorzeny escaped
an anti-Nazi camp at Darmstadt.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1948 Jul 28, In Ludwigshafen,
Germany, the I.G. Farben chemical plant exploded due to a vapor
explosion from dimethyl ether and 182/209 died.
(HSAB, 1994, p.46)(SC, 7/28/02)
1948 Aug 13, During the Berlin
Airlift, the weather over Berlin became so stormy that American planes
had their most difficult day landing supplies. They deemed it ‘Black
Friday.’
(HN, 8/13/98)
1948 Oct 18, [Heinrich A.H.]
Walther von Brauchitsch, German field marshal, died.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1948 Nov 16, Truman rejected
four-power talks on Berlin until the blockade was removed. President
Harry S. Truman relied heavily on Dean Acheson for his most significant
foreign policy achievements.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1948 Nov 30, Communists completed
the division of Berlin, installing the government in the Soviet sector.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1948 Composer Hans Eisler was
deported from the US by the House Un-American Activities Committee for
non-cooperation. He went to East Germany and composed the East German
national anthem.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.64)
1948 In Germany at the Nuremberg
War Trials deputy chief prosecutor Robert Kempner wrote in a letter
that 15 tons of Nazi gold were rushed out of Berlin before the fall of
the capital in 1945. He said 6 1/2 tons were sent to von Ribbentrop’s
castle in Fuschl, Austria, where it was allegedly turned over to
American troops. Two tons were sent to Schleswig-Holstein and allegedly
handed over to British troops. No record of either shipment was found
by researchers of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Three tons were sent
to the German side of Lake Constantine and then to Switzerland. The
rest was sent to other countries.
(SFC, 8/22/96, p.E4)
1948 In Germany Henri Nannen
(1914-1996) founded the weekly illustrated Zickzack Magazine that later
was renamed Stern.
(SFC, 10/15/96, p.A19)
1948 Ferdinand Porsche
(1875-1951), German car inventor, rolled out the first Porsche sports
car.
(Econ, 6/14/08, p.82)
1948 General Motors began
regaining control over Opel operations in Germany. GM collected some
$33 million in war reparations for Allied bombing of its German
facilities.
(SSFC, 1/7/07, p.E6)
1949 Mar 19, The Soviet People's
Council signed the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and
declared that the North Atlantic Treaty was merely a war weapon.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1949 Mar 25, Hanns A. Rauter (54),
German SS-commandant in Netherlands, was executed.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1949 Apr 14, The International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg’s made its last judgment.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1949 May 8, The Basic Law for the
Federal Republic of Germany (German: Grundgesetz für die
Bundesrepublik Deutschland), was formally approved. It was subsequently
ratified by all states except Bavaria. With the signature of the Allies
it came into effect on May 23, 1949, as the constitution of West
Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany)(EWH,
1968, p.1180)
1949 May 12, The Soviet Union
announced an end to the Berlin blockade. [see Sep 30, 1949]
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)(HN,
5/12/98)
1949 May 23, The Federal Republic
of (West) Germany with Bonn as the capital officially came into
existence under a new constitution.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(Econ, 3/28/09, p.59)
1949 May 27, Russians stopped
train traffic to and from West Berlin.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1949 Jul 29, Airlift in
West-Germany to West-Berlin ended. [see Sep 30]
(MC, 7/29/02)
1949 Aug 14, In Germany elections
for the Bundestag (lower house) gave the Christian Democrats a small
lead over the Socialists. The Free Democrats held the balance. The US
court at Nurnberg concluded the last of its war crimes trials with the
sentencing of 19 officials and diplomats.
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)
1949 Sep 12-1949 Sep 15, In
Germany Theodor Heuss (b.1884) was elected as President and Konrad
Adenauer (73) as Chancellor of the Federal Republic. Adenauer, head of
the Christian Democratic Union served until 963.
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(WSJ,
11/23/99, p.A21)
1949 Sep 21, In Germany the Allied
Occupation Statute came into force. The functions of the military
government were transferred to the Allied high commission. The Federal
Republic of [West] Germany was created under the 3-power occupation.
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)(MC, 9/21/01)
1949 Sep 30, The Berlin airlift
ended its operation after 277,264 flights. Through accidents 31
Americans lost their lives in support of the airlift. The Berlin
Airlift, which began on June 26, 1948, and lasted 321 days, consisted
of 272,264 flights by British and American airmen. They transported
some 2.3 million tons of food to supply the 2.1 million residents of
the blockaded portion of the city. The operation ended after 278,288
flights and delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies.
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)(AP, 9/30/97)(SFC, 5/12/98,
p.A14)(HNQ, 7/9/98)
1949 Oct 7, The German Democratic
Republic of East Germany was established. Wilhelm Pieck (1876-1960) was
president and Otto Grotewohl (b. 1894) was minister president.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1949 Nov 24, In Germany the
Petersberg agreement provided concessions to Western Germany from the
Allied high commission in return for German membership in the Int’l.
Ruhr Authority. The influx of 8 million Germans from the east caused
widespread unemployment. (EWH, 1968, p.1180)
1949 Nov 29, Petra Kelly, German
peace activist and MP for the Green Party, was born.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1949 Nov 29, Uranium mine
explosions in East Germany killed 3,700.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1949 Dec 15, West Germany received
its first allotment of funds from the Economic Co-operation
Administration and thus became a full participant in the Marshall Plan.
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)
1949 In Germany Bertolt Brecht
(1898-1956) formed the Berliner Ensemble. It was the most influential
theater in post-war Germany.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(WUD, 1994 p.183)(SFC, 12/29/99,
p.E1)
1949 The adopted constitution
guaranteed that "no one may be compelled against his conscience to
render war service involving the use of arms."
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A15)
1949 Heinrich Boere (b.1922), part
of a Waffen SS death squad of mostly Dutch volunteers, was sentenced to
death in the Netherlands. The squad had been tasked with killing fellow
countrymen in reprisal for attacks by the anti-Nazi resistance. His
sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and Boere managed to
escape to Germany. A German court has refused to extradite him because
he might have German nationality as well as Dutch. In 2008 Dortmund
prosecutor Ulrich Maass charged Heinrich Boere (86) with the 1944
murders of three men as a member of the Waffen SS death squad
code-named Silbertanne, or Silver Pine.
(AP, 3/8/08)(AP, 4/16/08)
1949 The German Volkswagen Beetle
was introduced in the US.
(SSFC, 7/20/03, p.A14)
1949 Hans Pfitzner, composer, died.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)
1949 Richard Strauss (b. 1864),
German conductor and composer, died.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(WUD, 1994, p.1405)
1950 Apr 3, Kurt Julian Weill
(50), German composer (Dreigroschenoper), died. His best known work is
the music for "The Threepenny Opera." His work also included "Der
Jasager." He was married to the singer Lotte Lenya. Letters between the
two over a period of 26 years have been edited and translated in a book
by Lys Symonette and Kim H Kowalke: "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)."
His work also included the theater piece "Der Weg der Verheissung" (The
Eternal Road). In 2002 Foster Hirsch authored "Kurt Weill on Stage:
From Berlin to Broadway."
(SFC, 5/26/96, BR p.6)(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)(SSFC,
3/17/02, p.M3)(MC, 4/3/02)
1950 Jul 24, Robert W. Lehnhoff,
[Executioner of Groningen], SS Führer, was executed.
(www.homestead.com/andakerkhoven/Story6.html)
1950 Sep 1, West Berlin was
granted a constitution.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1950 Sep 19, Allied foreign
ministers announced in NY that they regarded Adenauer's government to
be "the only German Government freely and legitimately constituted and
therefore entitled to speak for Germany as the representative of the
German people in international affairs."
(http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/gray_germanys.html)
1950 Dec 27, Max Beckmann
(b.1884), German painter, died in New York. The Nazis had branded him a
degenerate artist in 1937 and he moved to the US in 1946. His work
included the triptychs Departure (1932-1935) and Beginning (1946-1949),
and the Self-Portrait in Tails (1937). He was a figurative painter in
an age of abstraction.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C7)(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)(WSJ,
9/17/05, p.P20)
1950 Writer Ernst Juenger (d.1998)
went into a self-imposed exile in Wilflingen where he wrote over 50
books.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)
1950 German scientists (118),
described as “prisoners of peace” began arriving in Huntsville,
Alabama, to work on the US space program.
(WSJ, 11/10/04, p.A1)
1950 Ernst Grafenberg, a German
gynecologist, identified a small area behind the pubic bone of women,
the G-spot, that he said became an erogenous zone when stimulated. In
2005 Dr. David Matlock of Los Angeles invented and trademarked the
G-shot, a collagen injection to the G-spot, promoted to amplify sexual
arousal.
(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.F1)
1950 Some 20,000 Jews remained in
Germany. 8,000 of these were native German Jews and some 12,000 came
from eastern Europe, mostly from Poland.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.41)
1950s Emma Berger, a German
Christian, founded a sect of fervent believers in Stuttgart and led a
portion of them to Israel in 1963, where they founded a commune called
Bethel-El.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A1)
1951 Jan 30, Ferdinand Porsche
(b.1875), German car inventor (Porsche), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Porsche)
1951 Feb 1, Alfred Krupp & 28
other German war criminals were freed.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1951 Mar 13, Alfred Hugenberg,
German RC pres-dir of Krupp, media magnate, died.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1951 Mar 13, Israel demanded DM
6.2 billion ($1.5 billion) in German reparations for the cost of caring
for war refugees.
(HN, 3/13/98)(MC, 3/13/02)
1951 Apr 26, Arnold Sommerfeld
(b.1868), German theoretical physicist, died. He pioneered developments
in atomic and quantum physics. His atomic model permitted the
explanation of fine-structure spectral lines.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Arnold_Sommerfeld)
1951 May 1, Some 600,000 marched
for peace and freedom in Germany.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1951 Jun 8, Paul Bobel, Werner
Braune, Erich Naumann, Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, W. Schallenmair
& Otto Schmidt, last Nazi war criminals, were hanged by Americans
at Landsberg Fortress.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1951 Jul 9, President Truman asked
Congress to formally end the state of war between the United States and
Germany.
(AP, 7/9/97)
1951 Aug 12, Hertie and the
Lindren’s signed an agreement to merge the Wertheim Company with Hertie
Vereinigte Kaufstaetten with a plan to purchase 49% of the remaining
Wertheim stock. Arthur Lindgrens would be chairman.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.A8)
1951 Aug 22, Harlem Globetrotters
played in Olympic Stadium at Berlin before 75,052.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1951 Aug 31, The 1st 33 1/3 (LP)
album was introduced in Dusseldorf.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1951 Sep 8, Jurgen Stroop, Nazi
exterminator of Warsaw Ghetto, was hanged on site of the ghetto.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1951 Oct 19, President Truman
signed an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.
(AP, 10/19/97)
1951 The German film "The Story of
a Sinner" starred Hildegard Knef (d.2002 at 76). A brief nude scene
scandalized roman Catholic authorities.
(SFC, 2/4/02, p.B5)
1951 The Conference on Jewish
Material Claims against Germany was founded.
(Econ, 8/23/03, p.44)
1951 German corporations began
operating under a principle of co-determination between workers and
management. It applied to companies with more than 2000 workers.
(Econ, 1/29/05, p.63)(Econ, 7/16/05, p.16)
1952 Mar 1, Helgoland, in North
Sea, was returned to West Germany by Britain.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1952 Mar 21, A.J. Pieters,
SS-Untersturmfuhrer, was executed.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1952 Mar 21, Wilhelm Albrecht,
German SD-chief, was executed.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1952 Mar 26, F. Dürrenmatt's
"Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi" premiered in Munich.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1952 Mar 27, There was a failed
assassination attempt of German Chancellor Adenauer.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1952 May 31, Walter Schellenberg,
German lawyer, headed spy plot (Venlo), died of cancer.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1952 Sep 10, Germany and Israel
signed the Luxembourg Agreement, an accord about recovery payments.
West Germany agreed to pay Israel a sum of 3 billion marks over the
next fourteen years. It was signed by West German Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett and World Jewish
Congress President Nahum Goldmann.
(http://tinyurl.com/etznn)(http://tinyurl.com/h6n7m)
1952 Mrs. Aicher-Scholl (e.1998 at
81) published "White Rose," a description of the White Rose nonviolent
student resistance to the Third Reich.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1952 Germany banned the neo-Nazi
Socialist Reich Party, a successor to the Nazi Party.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A14)(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A3)
1953 Feb 24, Karl R.G. von
Rundstedt (77), German general and field marshal at Ardennes, died.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1953 Jun 17, The East Germans
threw stones at Russian tanks and were quickly subjugated. Eric
Honecker threatened demonstrators with a "Peking Solution." Soviet
tanks fought thousands of Berlin workers rioting against the East
German government.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WSJ, 10/18/96, p.A13)(HN,
6/17/98)
1953 Sep 6, Adenauer's CDU won
elections in German FR.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1953 Oct 9, Conrad Adenauer was
elected West German chancellor.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1953 Werner Hoefer (d.1997 at 84)
began his TV roundtable discussion "Der Internationale Freuschoppen."
He led the show until 1987. Revelations of his work as a Nazi forced
the end of his career as the show’s host.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B8)
1953 In West Germany a restitution
law included compensation for seized life, illness and retirement
policies of Jewish Holocaust victims.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.A13)
1953 The US military opened the
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, its largest medical facility outside
the US, in Landstuhl, Germany.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A14)
1953 Volkswagen began
manufacturing cars in Brazil.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.6)
1953-1986 Markus Wolf was the head of East Germany’s
int’l. spy network. He planted some 4,000 agents in the West during the
Cold War and managed to steal NATO secrets for the Soviet bloc. In 1997
he published "Man Without a Face," an account of his experiences.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/02/97, p.A20)
1954 Jan 20, The American CIA
built a tunnel from west Berlin to East Berlin to tap Soviet and East
German communications.
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)
1954 Feb 18, East and West Berlin
dropped thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of
a month long truce.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1954 Apr 7, The West German
government refused to recognize DDR (East Germany).
(MC, 4/7/02)
1954 Jul 4, West Germany beat
Hungary 3-2 to win the 5th World Cup soccer match in Bern, Switz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_World_Cup)
1954 Jul 20, West German secret
service head Otto John defected to German DR.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1954 Sep 10, Peter Anders, German
opera singer, died.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1954 Sep 23, East German police
arrested 400 citizens as U.S. spies.
(HN, 9/23/98)
1954 Sep 30, NATO nations agreed
to arm and admit West Germany.
(HN, 9/30/98)
1954 Oct 22, West Germany joined
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The country had no standing
army. [see Oct 23]
(AP, 10/22/97)(SFC, 4/22/98, p.A8)
1954 Oct 23, In Paris, an
agreement was signed providing for West German sovereignty and
permitting West Germany to rearm and enter NATO and the Western
European Union. Britain, England, France and USSR agreed to end
occupation of Germany. [see Oct 22]
(HN, 10/23/98)(MC, 10/23/01)
1954 Nov 30, Wilhelm Furtwangler
(68), German conductor and composer, died. He was Hitler’s favorite
conductor but was never a card carrying Nazi.
(SFC, 1/3/97, p.C6)(MC, 11/30/01)
1954 Werner Haftmann (d.1999 at
87), German art historian, published "Painting of the 20th Century."
(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D8)
1954 Otto John, the first head of
West Germany’s Federal Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution -
an intelligence agency, crossed over to East Berlin. He said he was
kidnapped.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.D5)
1955 Mar 25, E. Germany was
granted full sovereignty by occupying power, USSR.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1955 Apr 30, West German unions
protested for 40-hour work week and more wages.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1955 May 5, West Germany became a
sovereign state.
(AP, 5/5/97)
1955 May 6, West Germany joined
NATO.
(WSJ, 10/8/01, p.A14)(MC, 5/6/02)
1955 May 14, Representatives from
eight Communist bloc countries: Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland & Romania, signed the
Warsaw Pact in Poland. Andras Hegedues signed for Hungary.
(AP, 5/14/97)(SFC, 10/26/99, p.B4)(MC, 5/14/02)
1955 May 18, Edwin Scharff (68),
German painter, sculptor (Rossebändiger), died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1955 Jun 30, The U.S. began
funding West Germany’s rearmament.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1955 Aug 12, Thomas Mann (80),
German writer (Dr. Faustus, Nobel 1929), died. Two biographies of Mann
were published in 1995: Thomas Mann: A Biography by Ronald Hayman and
Thomas Mann: A Life by Donald Prater.
(V.D.-H.K.p.367-368)(WSJ, 12/26/95, p. A-5)(MC,
8/12/02)
1955 Nov 16, Big Four talks,
taking place in Geneva on German reunification, ended in failure.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1955 Dec, Otto John returned to
West Germany. He was charged with treason and in 1956 was convicted and
sentenced to 4 years in prison.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.D5)
1955 The "documenta x" art show,
an exhibition of contemporary art began in Kassel under Werner
Haftmann. It began a tradition with new shows every 4-5 years.
(WSJ, 7/7/97, p.A12)(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D8)
1955 Germany established its
Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program.
(Econ, 1/5/08, SR p.14)
1955 The Bundeswehr, [West]
Germany’s postwar conscript army, was established. It served first as
West Germany's military and, since 1990, as that of the reunited
Germany.
(SFC, 4/30/98, p.A8)(AP, 11/27/08)
1955 In West Germany Wilhelm
Karmann designed and built the Karmann-Ghia in cooperation with
Volkswagen and Porsche.
(SFC, 10/30/98, p.D4)
1955 In Dresden, East Germany,
Manfred von Ardenne (d.1997 at 90) established a scientific institute.
He had worked for the Soviets and innovated a process for splitting
isotopes to enrich uranium, a vital part of Soviet nuclear bomb
development.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.A17)
1955 In East Germany some Russian
soldiers came down with a neurological disorder that was thought to be
the result of CIA poisoning. It was found that the cause of illness was
the eating of a rabid fox. East vs. West tensions of this time were
later documented by 2 former spies and a director of Radio Liberty.
David Murphy, Sergei Kondrashev and George Bailey in: "Battleground
Berlin."
(WSJ, 8/27/97, p.A10)
1955-1962 East German spymaster Markus Wolf led spy
operations over this time. He was charged in 1997 with kidnapping,
coercion and causing bodily harm.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.A7)
1955-1969 Germany followed the Hallstein Doctrine
named after Walter Hallstein. According to the doctrine, the Federal
Republic of Germany had the exclusive right to represent the entire
German nation, and with the exception of the Soviet Union, West Germany
would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any state
that recognized East Germany. The doctrine was first applied to
Yugoslavia in 1957.
(Econ, 3/22/08,
p.59)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstein_Doctrine)
1956 Apr 3, German war criminals
Hinrichsen, Ruhl, Siebens and Viebahn were freed.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1956 Apr 13, Emil Nolde (b.1867 as
Emil Hansen), German Expressionist painter, died. He was a member of
the artist group Die Brucke.
(Econ, 10/11/08,
p.116)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Nolde)
1956 May 29, Hermann Abendroth
(73) German conductor (Gewandhausorkest), died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1956 Aug 14, Bertold Brecht
(b.1898), German dramatist (Mother Courage), died. His first play was
"Baal." He also wrote "The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui," a satire on
Hitler’s rise to power. In 1959 Prof. Martin Esslin (d.2002 at 83)
authored "Brecht: A Choice of Evils."
(WSJ, 10/3/96, p.A12)(SFEC, 8/10/97, DB p.15)(SFC,
2/28/02, p.A20)(MC, 8/14/02)
1956 Aug 14, Freiherr Constantine
von Neurath, German foreign minister under Hitler (1932-38), died.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1956 Oct 26, Walter Gieseking
(60), German pianist and composer, died.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1956 Oct 27, A Franco-German
agreement was signed to transfer the Saar Basin to West Germany.
France, Germany and Luxembourg agreed to canalize the Moselle River,
connecting the steel industry with the Ruhr Valley. The Saar Treaty
established that Saarland should be allowed to rejoin Germany. This
took place on Jan 1, 1957.
(EWH, 1968,
p.1182)(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Saarland)
1956 Nov 6, Pressure from the US
and USSR effected a cease-fire in the Middle-East. The UN created an
emergency force (UNEF) to supervise a cease fire. Britain’s PM Anthony
Eden called French PM Guy Mollet to tell him that Britain was aborting
operations in Egypt. German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, meeting with
Mollet, remarked that Europe must unite to counter the influence of the
United States.
(TOH, 1982, p.1956)(EWH, 1968, p. 1242)(Econ,
7/29/06, p.24)
1956 Germany banned the Communist
Party.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A14)
1956 The German army, Bundeswehr,
was created.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A15)
1957 Jan 1, The state of Saarland,
established in 1920 in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, joined
the Federal Republic of West Germany. The Nazis had called the area
"Westmark." After World War II the Saarland had come under French
administration.
(Econ, 8/29/09,
p.45)(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Saarland)
1957 Feb 1, Friedrich von Paulus
(66), German field marshal (Stalingrad), died.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1957 Feb 16, LeVar Burton, (Roots,
Star Trek Next Generation), was born in Landstuhl, Germany.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1957 Mar 12, German DR accepted 22
Russian armed divisions.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1957 Aug 11, Paul Hindemith's
opera "Harmonie der Welt," premiered in Munich.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1957 Oct 3, Willy Brandt was
elected mayor of West Berlin.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1957 Oct 22, Conrad Adenauer was
re-elected chancellor of West-Germany.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1957 In East Germany Ruth Werner,
Communist spy in Britain during WW II, authored a novel of her early
years: "An Unusual Girl."
(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1957 In Zwickau, East Germany, the
first Trabant car was manufactured.
(SSFC, 6/17/07, p.A2)
1957-1989 Erich Mielke became the head of the East
German Ministry of State Security, aka Stasi.
(SFC, 5/26/00, p.D3)
1958 Aug 24, Leo Blech (87),
German conductor and composer, died.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1958 Nov 21, A Soviet-East German
commission met in East Berlin to discuss the transfer to East German
control of Soviet functions and end its occupation status in Berlin.
(AP, 11/21/02)
1958 Dec 14, The United States,
Britain and France rejected Soviet demands that they withdraw their
troops from West Berlin and agreed to liquidate the Allied occupation
in West Berlin.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1958 William Manchester (d.2004),
US historian and biographer, authored “The Arms of Krupp,” a history of
the German steel and munitions makers.
(SFC, 6/2/04, B7)
1958 Marcel Reich-Ranicki,
Polish-born Holocaust survivor, defected to West Germany. He was soon
drawn into "Gruppe 47," the literary circle of Walter Jens and Heinrich
Boll. In 1960 he joined Die Zeit as a literary critic.
(SFC, 9/2/02, p.D5)
1959 May 1, West Germany
introduced a 5 day work week.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1959 May 19, Nicole Brown Simpson,
Mrs. OJ Simpson (murdered), was born in Frankfurt, Germany.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1959 Jul 1, Israeli Knesset agreed
to weapon sales to West Germany.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1959 Jul 6, Saar became part of
the German Federal Republic.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1959 Sep 28, Edward Albee’s play
“The Zoo Story,” written in 1958, opened in Berlin. In 1960 it opened
in the US.
(SFC, 12/31/08, p.E2)
1959 Nov 15, In Germany the Bad
Godesberg Program, designed to broaden support for the Social
Democratic Party, was ratified at an SPD party convention. For the
first time the SPD forswore all Marxist ideas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godesberg_Program)
1959 Gunter Grass published his
novel "The Tin Drum." It criticized German authorities for supplying
arms to the Turkish government. An English translation was published in
1963.
(SFC,10/21/97, p.A12)
1960 Jan-Aug, 160,000 refugees
crossed from East Germany to West Germany following food shortages.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered a wall 103 miles long and 12
feet high to be built with guards and barbed wire to stop the flow of
refugees.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, Z1 p.4)
1960 Mar 31, Joseph Haas (81),
German opera composer (Totenmesse), died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1960 May, Israeli agents captured
former SS Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann living in Argentina.
(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)
1960 Jul 16, Albrecht von
Kesselring (74), German field marshal (Italy), died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1960 Jul 21, Germany passed the
Volkswagen law legislation privatizing Volkswagen. It capped a
shareholder's voting rights at 20%, regardless of the number of shares
held, and required a majority of 80% for "important decisions." It also
gave Lower Saxony, the state in which Volkswagen is based, a
controlling minority stake in the automaker. In 2007 the European Court
ruled that the VW law had to go.
(http://uk.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUKL2232313720071023)(Econ,
6/14/08, p.82)
1960 Aug 18, Beatles gave their
1st public performance at Kaiser Keller in Hamburg.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1960 Aug 30, East Germany imposed
a partial blockade on West Berlin.
(MC, 8/30/01)
1960 Sep 8, German DR limited
access to East-Berlin for West Berliners.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1960 Dec 20, Auschwitz-commandant
Richard Baar was arrested in German FR.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1960 Hans-Georg Gadamer (d.2002),
German philosopher and influential in hermeneutics (the study of the
understanding and meaning of texts), authored "Truth and Method."
(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A24)
1961 Aug 12, East German troops
began stringing barbed wire around East Berlin. In 2004 William F.
Buckley authored "The Fall of the Berlin Wall." [see Aug 15]
(WSJ, 3/18/04, p.D10)
1961 Aug 13, East Germany closed
the Brandenberg Gate sealing off the border between the city's eastern
and western sectors in order to halt the flight of refugees. Two days
later, work began on the Berlin Wall.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(TMC, 1994, p.1961)(AP,
8/13/97)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F4)
1961 Aug 14(15), An East German
soldier, Hans Conrad Schuhmann (Schuman), jumped a 3-foot barbed wire
barrier to West Berlin to join his family. His photograph made int’l.
headlines. He committed suicide in 1998.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A25)(SFEC, 10/31/99, Z1 p.4)
1961 Aug 15, East German workers
began building the Berlin Wall. [see Aug 12]
(AP, 8/15/01)
1961 Aug 16, Some 250,000 West
Berliners demonstrated against East Berlin.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1961 Aug 20, East Germany began
erecting a 5' high wall along the border with the west to replace the
barbed wire put up Aug 13.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1961 Aug 23, East Germany imposed
new curbs on travel between West and East Berlin.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1961 Aug 31, A concrete wall
replaced the barbed wire fence that separated East and West Germany, it
would be called the Berlin wall.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1961 Nov, In Germany Heinz Felfe
(b.1918), the head of counter-intelligence at the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and a veteran of the Nazi special forces,
was arrested as an agent of the KGB.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.50)(http://tinyurl.com/jmnpe)
1961 Dec 15, Adolf Eichmann, the
former German Gestapo official accused of a major role in the Nazi
murder of 6 million Jews, was sentenced by a Jerusalem court to be
hanged. Adolf Eichmann was the administrator of the so-called Final
Solution and supervised the transportation of prisoners to
concentration camps.
(AP, 12/15/97)(HN, 12/15/98)
1961 Marshall Dill Jr. (d.2000 at
84) authored "Germany: A Modern History."
(SFC, 9/6/00, p.D2)
1961 The German film "Flight to
Berlin" was directed by Will Tremper.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C11)
1962 Aug 17, East German border
guards shot and mortally wounded 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who had
attempted to cross over the Berlin Wall into the western sector.
(AP, 8/17/97)
1962 Dec 26, Eight East Berliners
escaped to West Berlin, crashing through gates in an armor plated bus.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1962 Wolfgang Vogel, East Berlin
lawyer and confidant to Erich Honnecker, secured the release of US
pilot Gary Powers (captured 5/1/60) in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf
Abel. During his 30-year career he secured the release of more than 100
agents and helped shepherd nearly 34,000 political prisoners and
215,000 East Germans to freedom in the West. Powers, was returned to
the West across the Glienicker Bridge in Potsdam, Germany, after being
held for 21 months.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A14)(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.T6)
1962 Aribert Heim (48) was charged
by German authorities with killing hundreds of concentration inmates in
Germany and Austria with lethal injections. He is thought to have
evaded capture in Germany, Argentina, Denmark, Brazil and Spain. During
WW II Heim earned the nickname of "Dr. Death" for experimenting on
inmates at the Buchenwald and Mauthausen camps. In 1979 Heim was
indicted in Germany in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder. In
2005 he was tracked to Spain. In 2009 new information indicated that he
had died in Egypt in 1992.
(AP, 10/15/05)(AP, 2/5/09)
1963 Jan, Gen. Charles de Gaulle
and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the Franco-German
"reconciliation treaty."
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)
1963 Jan 17, Soviet leader
Khrushchev visited the Berlin Wall. [see Feb 17]
(HN, 1/17/99)
1963 Feb 17, Soviet leader
Khrushchev visited the Berlin Wall. [see Jan 17]
(HN, 2/17/98)
1963 Feb 20, Rolf Hochhuth's "Der
Stellvertreter" (The Representative) premiered in Berlin. The work
indicted Pope Pius XII for Nazi complicity during WW II. The Catholic
Church was outraged at the portrayal of Pius XII as a war criminal. An
English translation by Richard and Clara Winston was published as “The
Deputy: A Play,” by Grove Press in 1964. In 2002 The Deputy was made
into the film “Amen.” by Costa Gavras.
(WSJ, 4/25/97,
p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deputy)(Econ, 10/25/08, p.73)
1963 Jun 26, President Kennedy
visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: "Ich bin ein
Berliner" (I am a Berliner) at the Berlin Wall. Rumors later spread
that the misplaced article "ein" made an exact translation to say "I am
a jelly donut."
(AP, 6/26/97)(HN, 6/26/98)(SFC, 2/3/00, p.A25)
1963 Jun 28, Khrushchev visited
East-Berlin.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1963 Jun 29, Anne-Sophie Mutter,
violinist (Berlin Phil), was born in Rheinfeldin, Germany.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1963 Oct 2, W. German Chancellor
Adenauer condemned western grain shipments to USSR.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1963 Dec 20, The Berlin Wall was
opened for the first time to West Berliners, who were allowed one-day
visits to relatives in the Eastern sector for the holidays. Four
thousand crossed the great wall of Berlin to visit relatives under a 17
day Christmas accord.
(AP, 12/20/98)(HN, 12/20/98)
1963 Dec 20, The trial of 21 camp
guards from Auschwitz began.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1963 Dec 28, Paul Hindemith
(b.1895), German composer (Composer's World) and violist, died. His
work included "Cardillac."
(WUD, 1994, p.672)(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)(MC, 12/28/01)
1963 Playwright Rolf Hochhuth
produced "The Deputy." The work indicted Pope Pius XII for Nazi
complicity during WW II.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1963 The German film "Delay in
Marienborn" was directed by Will Tremper.
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C11)
1963 Ludwig Erhard, head of the
Christian Democratic Union, replaced Konrad Adenauer as Chancellor and
served to 1966.
(AP, 11/21/05)
1964 Jan 28, The Soviets downed a
U.S. jet over East Germany killing three.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1964 Apr 20, August Sander
(b.1876), German photographer, died. He attempted to make a complete
portrait survey of 20th century German society. His “Face of Our Time,”
a volume of 60 photographs, was published in 1929.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Sander)(WSJ,
6/3/04, p.D8)(Econ, 8/29/09, p.74)
1964 Oct 3-4, East Berliners dug a
470-foot tunnel, Tunnel 57, to the West and 57 people escaped.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.T5)(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.A27)
1964 Oct 5, Egon Shultz, an East
German border soldier, was shot to death at the site of the escape
tunnel. A 1994 report said he was inadvertently killed by another
border soldier.
(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.A27)
1964 Oct 6, Richard Scheibe,
German sculptor (Adler mit Hakenkreuz), died at 85.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1964 The one millionth guest
worker arrived in Germany.
(SFC, 8/29/97, p.A18)
1965 Feb 26, West Germany ceased
military aid to Tanzania.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1965 Mar 14, Israel's cabinet
formally approved establishing diplomatic relations with West Germany.
(AP, 3/14/99)
1965 Mar 25, West German Bondsdag
extended war crimes retribution.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1965 May 12, West Germany and
Israel exchanged letters establishing diplomatic relations.
(AP, 5/12/97)
1965 May 13, Several Arab nations
broke ties with West Germany after it established diplomatic relations
with Israel.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1965 Aug 19, Auschwitz trials
ended with only 6 life sentences.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1965 Sep 2, The Treblinka trial in
Dusseldorf ended.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1965 Dec 3, Katarina Witt, figure
skater (Olympic-Gold-1984, 88), was born in Staaken, GDR.
(MC, 12/3/01)
c1965 Sigmar Polke created his
work "Potato Heads: Nixon and Khrushchev."
(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.A20)
1965 Werner Tubke, German artist,
created his painting “Reminiscences of Schulze, JD III.”
(WSJ, 2/10/09, p.D7)
1966 May 18, Paul Altheas (78),
German theologist (That Christian Wahrheit), died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1966 Jun 12, Hermann Scherchen
(74), German conductor, music publisher, died.
(MC, 6/12/02)
1966 Sep 17, Fritz Wunderlich,
charismatic German tenor (Stuttgart 1955-58), died at 35 from falling
down stairs, two months short of his Met Opera debut.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1966 Sep 30, Nazi war criminals
Albert Speer, the German minister of armaments, and Baldur von
Schirach, the founder of the Hitler Youth, were freed at midnight from
Spandau prison after serving twenty-year prison sentences. In 2002
Joachim Fest authored the biography: "Speer: The final Verdict."
(www.weymouthhistoricalsociety.org/September.htm)(SSFC, 10/6/02, p.M3)
1966 Oct 17, Wieland Wagner,
German opera director and grandson of Richard Wagner, died.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1966 Ludwig Boelkow (d.2003)
founded the German "Airbus Studio" that he took with him to the Paris
Airshow at Le Bourget, for the first time suggesting a Franco-German,
or even a European consortium could build an airliner to rival
U.S.-made jets.
(AP, 7/28/03)
1966-1969 Kurt Georg Kiesinger (d.1988), head of the
Christian Democratic Union, served as West German chancellor.
(AP, 11/21/05)
1966-1973 Helmut Kohl served as the chairman of the
Christian Democratic Union in his home state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
(WSJ, 1/19/00, p.A18)
1967 Mar 26, Herbert von Karajan
founded the Salzburg Easter Festival with the idea of staging his ideal
Ring of the Nibelung with his own Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
(WSJ, 4/12/96, p.A-12)
1967 Apr 19, Conrad Adenauer
(b.1876), West Germany chancellor (1949-63), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Adenauer)
1967 Jun 2, In Germany Benno
Ohnesorg, a newly wed student of literature, was shot in the back of
the head during a protest in West Berlin against the visiting shah of
Iran. Police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras, who claimed he was threatened
by knife-wielding protesters, was acquitted of manslaughter charges on
Nov 23. The led to the formation of the Red Army Faction, also known as
the Baader-Meinhof gang. In 2009 Kurras was found to have been a
long-time agent of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi.
(Econ, 5/30/09,
p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrun_Ensslin)
1967 Jul 30, Alfred Krupp (59),
German industrialist, died.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1967 Sep, The British, French and
German governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to start
development of the 300 seat Airbus A300 in order to compete with
American companies. Airbus Industrie was formally set up in 1970.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/airbus)
1967 In East Germany Soviet Troops
founded the Museum of the Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in
the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, BR p.3)
1967 The Bruecke-Museum was
founded in Berlin.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.A17)
1967 In Marburg, Germany, a
disease believed to be caused from African monkeys infected 31 people
in a laboratory. The virus came to be called the Marburg virus. Seven
people died in Germany and Yugoslavia from the virus. It was traced to
infected vervet monkeys from Uganda cut up for polio research.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.D2)(Econ, 8/18/07, p.40)
1968 Feb 18, Some 10,000 people in
West Berlin demonstrated against US in Vietnam War.
(www.dreamsville.net/?p=196)
1968 Apr 2, In West Germany the
Baader-Meinhof gang was formed and named after its founders, Andreas
Baader (d.1977) and Ulrike Meinhof (d.1976). Both later committed
suicide in prison. The gang became known as the Red Army Faction and
led assassinations, bombings and bank robberies in West Germany through
the 1970s and 1980s. The RAF published a letter to Reuters in 1998 and
declared to have disbanded.
(SFC, 4/21/98,
p.A18)(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1968.html)
1968 Apr 6, East German voters
approved a new socialist constitution by a 94.5% margin.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_Constitution)
1968 Apr 11, Riots erupted in West
Berlin after the shooting of student leader Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979).
He survived the assassination attempt by a right-wing extremist, living
for another twelve years until related health problems caused his death.
(WUD, 1994,
p.1687)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudi_Dutschke)
1968 May 25, George KFW von
Kuchler (1881-1968), German marshal, died. Kuchler’s forces moved into
Belgium and occupied Antwerp on 18 May 1940.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_K%C3%BCchler)
1968 May 30, Authorities blew up
the University Church in Leipzig, Germany, to make room for the
re¬construction of Karl-Marx-Platz, the city’s main square.
(http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=61806)
1968 Jul 20, Joseph Keilberth
(b.1908), German conductor (Bayreuth Festival), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Keilberth)
1968 Aug 3, The Bratislava
statement conceded Czechoslovakia’s right to pursue its own path. The
conference was held in Bratislava, Slovakia, for representatives of the
communist and workers' parties of the People's Republic of Bulgaria,
the Hungarian People's Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the
Polish People's Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
(WUD, 1994,
p.1687)(http://library.thinkquest.org/C001155/documents/doc41.htm)
1968 Nov 26, Arnold Zweig (81),
German antifascist and author (Junge frau 1914), died.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1969 Feb 26, Karl Jaspers
(b.1883), German psychiatrist, philosopher, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jaspers)
1969 Feb 27, Thousands of students
protested President Nixon's arrival in Rome. Nixon visited West Berlin.
(HN, 2/27/98)(MC, 2/27/02)
1969 Mar 5, Gustav Heinemann was
elected West German President.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1969 May 2, Franz JHMM von Papen
(b.1879), German chancellor (1932), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Papen)
1969 Jul 5, Wilhelm Backhaus
(b.1884), German pianist (Rubinstein-1905), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Backhaus)
1969 Jul 5, Walter Gropius
(b.1883), architect, founder (Bauhaus school of design), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gropius)
1969 Jul 7, Der Spiegel revealed
Munich's Bishop Defregger as a war criminal. Charges against Defregger
were dropped in 1970.
(http://tinyurl.com/5f8qts)www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909636,00.html?iid=chix-sphere)
1969 Aug 6, Theodor Adorno, German
philosopher, died of a heart attack. In 2008 Detlev Claussen authored
“Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius.”
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/adorno.htm)
1969 Anselm Kiefer created his
work "Untitled (Heroic Symbols)."
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1969 Dec, The world premier of
"Requiem for a Young Poet" by Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) was
conducted by Michael Gielen in Dusseldorf. Zimmermann committed suicide
9 moths later.
(WSJ, 4/20/99, A20)(http://tinyurl.com/9eknvf)
1969 Germany passed a set of
labeling laws similar to the French 1935 Appellation d’Origine
Controlee (controlled place of origin). The AOC laws were meant to
protect growers and properly identify a wine’s origin. They were not
intended as an indicator of quality.
(SFC, 1/8/97, zz-1 p.4)
1969-1974 Willy Brandt (1913-1992), head of the
Social Democratic Party, served as the West German chancellor.
(AP,
11/21/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Brandt)
1970 Mar 19, Willy Brandt and
Willi Stoph met for the first East-West Germany summit in Berlin.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1970 May 14, In West Germany
Andreas Baader, a rabid opponent of the Vietnam War, broke out of
prison with the help of gang members including Ulrike Meinhof.
(WSJ, 4/3/09,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof)
1970 Jun 3, Hjalmar Horace Greeley
Schacht (b.1877), President of Germany’s Reichsbank (1933-1939),
minister of Economics (1934-1936), died. Schacht was tried for crimes
against peace in Nuremberg in 1946. His defense was that he was only a
banker and economist.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Schacht)
1970 Sep 25, Erich M. Remarque
(b.1898), German writer, died. His books included “Im West Nichts
Neues” (All Quiet on the Western Front), 1929.
(http://kirjasto.sci.fi/remarque.htm)
1970 Dec 7, Poland and West
Germany signed a pact renouncing use of force to settle disputes,
recognizing the Oder-Neisse River as Poland's western frontier, and
acknowledging transfer to Poland of 40,000 square miles of former
German territory.
(HN, 12/7/98)
1970 Dec 22, Treblinka SS
commander Franz Stangl (b.1908) was sentenced to life in prison. He was
responsible for the murder of approximately 900,000 people in the
period 1941-1943.
(www.simon-wiesenthal-archiv.at/02_dokuzentrum/02_faelle/e02_stangl.html)
1970 Anselm Kiefer created his
work "Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven."
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1970 The German film "How Did a
Nice Girl Like You Get Into This Business" was directed by Will Tremper
(e.1998 at 70).
(SFC, 12/17/98, p.C11)
1970 German film director Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made "Rio das Mortes."
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E5)
1970 Airbus Industrie was formally
set up following an agreement between Aerospatiale (France) and
Deutsche Aerospace (Germany). In 1971 it was joined by CASA (Spain).
The name "Airbus" was taken from a nonproprietary term used by the
airline industry in the 1960s to refer to a commercial aircraft of a
certain size and range, as term was acceptable to the French
linguistically.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/airbus)
1971 May 29, Max Trapp (b.1887),
German composer, died in Berlin (other sources say he died May 31).
(www.musicorb.com/search.php?day=All&month=All&year=1971&e=1&b=1&d=1&start=0)
1971 Aug 14, Georg von Opel
(b.1912), German auto manufacturer, died.
(www.thepeerage.com/p15853.htm)
1971 Sep 3, The Quadripartite
Agreement on Berlin, between the United States, the Soviet Union, the
United Kingdom and France. ended a long time source of tension.
(WUD, 1994, p.
1688)(http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga5-710903.htm)
1971 Oct 20, Willy Brandt, West
German Chancellor, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for beginning the
German reunification.
(WUD, 1994, p.
1688)(http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1971/brandt-cv.html)
1971 Milli Gorus, an Islamic
Turkish community organization, was founded in Germany as Turkische
Union Deutschland.
(http://flagspot.net/flags/eu%7Digmg.html)
1972 Apr 25, Hans-Werner Grosse
(b.1922), German glider pilot, glided 907.7 miles (1,461 km) in an
AS-W-12.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Werner_Grosse)
1972 April 27, The German
opposition took advantage of the crumbling Bundestag majority of the
social-liberal coalition to bring a vote of no-confidence against Willy
Brandt. In a secret vote, Rainer Barzel failed to achieve the required
majority in the Bundestag and Willy Brandt remained Federal Chancellor.
(http://tinyurl.com/dgyyl)
1972 Jun 7, German Chancellor
Willy Brandt began a 5-day visit to Israel.
(http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2506)
1972 Jun 15, Ulrike Meinhof
(1934-1976), co-leader of the Baader-Meinhof gang, was arrested in West
Germany.
(SFC, 1/10/01, p.A8)(WSJ, 4/3/09,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof)
1972 Aug 26, The XX Olympiad
opened in Munich, Germany. The IOC had withdrawn Rhodesia’s invitation
to the summer Olympics after several African nations threatened a
boycott.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Summer_Olympics)
1972 Sep 4, U.S. swimmer Mark
Spitz won a record seventh Olympic gold medal in the 400-meter relay at
the Munich Summer Olympics.
(AP, 9/4/97)
1972 Sep 5, Terror struck the
Munich Olympic games in West Germany as Arab guerrillas attacked the
Israeli delegation. Palestinian terrorists killed 2 athletes and took 9
others and their coaches hostage. Eleven Israelis, five guerrillas and
a police officer were killed in a 20-hour siege. The Palestinian
commandos were linked to Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.
In 1984 George Jonas authored “Vengeance,” an account of an Israeli hit
squad ordered to track down those responsible for the Munich attack. In
2000 the TV documentary "One Day in September" depicted the events. In
2005 Aaron J. Klein authored “Striking Back,” and account of Israel’s
response to the Munich attack. The 2005 the Stephen Spielberg film
“Munich” was based on the book by George Jonas.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(WSJ, 9/8/00, p.W4)(WSJ,
12/21/05, p.D10)(WSJ, 1/14/06, p.A9)
1972 Sep 6, The Summer Olympics
resumed in Munich, West Germany, a day after the deadly hostage crisis
that claimed the lives of 11 Israelis and five Arab abductors.
(AP, 9/6/97)
1972 Sep 10, At the Munich Summer
Olympics, the US Olympic basketball team lost to the Soviets, 51-50, in
a gold-medal match marked by controversy because officials ordered the
final three seconds of the game replayed, enabling the Soviets to win.
The US protested, to no avail. Frank Shorter of the United States won
the men's marathon at the Munich Olympics.
(AP,
9/10/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Summer_Olympics)
1972 Sep 11, The 20th Olympic
games closed at Munich, German FR.
(AP, 9/11/00)
1972 Oct 29, Hijackers of a German
Lufthansa passenger jet demanded the release of the three surviving
terrorists, who had been arrested after the Fürstenfeldbruck
gunfight and were being held for trial. Palestinian guerrillas killed
an airport employee and hijacked a plane, carrying 27 passengers, to
Cuba. They forced West Germany to release 3 terrorists who were
involved in the Munich Massacre.
(HN,
10/29/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre)
1972 Nov 19, Willy Brandt's SPD
won West German elections. Willy Brandt was the 1st German chancellor
to seek early elections via a vote of confidence.
(http://tinyurl.com/bs7oe)(Econ, 6/11/05, p.49)
1972 Dec 2, Friedrich
Christian Christiansen (92), German Luftwaffe general, died. He was
born at Wyk on Foehr, Germany, on December 12, 1879. Christiansen was
appointed officer commanding occupied Holland, a post he held until the
end of the war when he was imprisoned by the Allies. On his release
from prison he retired to West Germany and died at Innien.
(www.theaerodrome.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-11160.html)
1972 Dec 3, A Spantax Convair 990A
charter carrying West German tourists crashed in Tenerife, Canary
Island, and 155 died.
(www.secret-tenerife.com/2006/03/tenerife-air-disasters-in-perspective.shtml)
1972 Dec 7-1972 Dec 8, Two
skeletons were found on the Ulap fairgrounds in Berlin. They were later
identified as Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann (1900-1945) and Ludwig
Stumpfegger, one of Hitler’s doctors.
(http://greyfalcon.us/restored/myPictures/Martin%20Bormann.htm)
1972 German film director Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant."
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)
1972 The biopic film "The Death of
Maria Malibran" was by the German director Werner Schroeter.
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.E3)
1972 SAP, a German business
software company based in Walldorf, Baden-Wurttemberg, was founded by
Hasso Plattner and 4 other dissidents from IBM.
(Econ, 5/20/06, p.73)(Econ, 10/28/06, p.78)
1973 Apr 16, Istvan Kertesz
(b.1929), Hungarian-born German conductor, drowned. Kertész was
the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1965 to
1968,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istv%C3%A1n_Kert%C3%A9sz)
1973 May 18, Russian party leader
Brezhnev visited West Germany.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1973-5/1973-05-18-CBS-12.html)
1973 May 28, Hans
Schmidt-Isserstedt (b.1900), German composer and conductor, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Schmidt-Isserstedt)
1973 Jun 9, Erich von Manstein
(b.1887), one of Hitler’s WW II field marshals, died in Bavaria. In
1958 he authored his autobiography “Lost Victories.”
(WSJ, 10/7/06,
p.P12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_Manstein)
1973 Jul 6, Otto Klemperer
(b.1885), German-born conductor and composer, died in Zurich. He had
taken United States citizenship in 1937 and Israeli citizenship in 1970.
(WSJ, 8/20/96,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Klemperer)
1973 Oct 1, An East German border
order to border guards from the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi,
said: “Do not hesitate with the use of a firearm, including when the
border breakouts involve women and children, which the traitors have
already frequently taken advantage of." The order was made public in
2007.
(AP, 8/11/07)
1973 German film director Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made "Martha," based on a story by American writer
Cornell Woolrich.
(SFC, 7/24/97, p.E3)
1973 Musica Antiqua Köln was
founded by violinist Reinhard Goebel.
(WSJ, 3/28/97, p.A14)
1973 Germany shut the door to new
guest workers, who were mostly Turks, which encouraged migrants to
import their families.
(Econ, 4/5/08, p.32)
1973-1998 Helmut Kohl served as the chairman of the
National Christian Democratic Union.
(WSJ, 1/19/00, p.A18)
1974 May 7, West German chancellor
W. Brandt (1913-1992) resigned. A bizarre spy scandal brought Brandt
down after 4 years in office.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Brandt)(WSJ,
9/11/03, p.D10)
1974 May 16, Helmut Schmidt
(b.1918), head of the Social Democratic Party became the West German
chancellor and served until October 1, 1982.
(AP, 11/21/05)(SFC, 5/31/00,
p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Schmidt)
1974 Aug 8, Baldur von Schirach
(b.1907), Nazi youth leader, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur_von_Schirach)
1974 Sep 4, The US & German DR
established diplomatic relations.
(http://tinyurl.com/6xdex7)
1974 Oct 9, Czech-born German
businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving about 1,200 Jews
during the Holocaust, died in Frankfurt, West Germany; at his request,
he was buried in Jerusalem. His wife Emilie died in 2001.
(AP, 10/9/99)(SSFC, 10/7/01, p.A29)
1974 Nov 16, Walther Meissner
(b.1882), German physicist (Meissner Effect), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Mei%C3%9Fner)
1974 Joseph Beuys (1921-1986),
German artist, created his performance piece: "I like America, and
America likes Me," in which he lived with a coyote in a New York
gallery for 5 days.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR p.8)
1974 German film director Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul."
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E5)
1974 Holger Meins, an imprisoned
member of the Red Army Faction, died while on a hunger strike.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A1)
1975 Feb 24, Hans Bellmer
(b.1902), German surrealist artist, died in Paris. He made paper-mache
female dolls and photographed them in skewed configurations.
(NW, 2/18/02,
p.70)(www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/oisteanu/oisteanu3-14-05.asp)
1975 Apr 24, Hanna Krabbe
(b.1945), a German Red Army faction guerrilla, took part in a
Baader-Meinhof gang attack on the German embassy in Stockholm in which
two German diplomats died. German chancellor Helmut Schmidt approved
the storming of the building by Swedish police. Krabbe was
arrested and sentenced to 21 years confinement and was released in 1996.
(SFC, 5/11/96,
p.A-9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_German_embassy_siege)
1975 May 21, The trial against the
Baader-Meinhof gang began in Stuttgart.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction)
1975 Jul 6, Otto Skorzeny
(b.1908), German-Austrian SS officer, died. He was the commando leader
who rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from imprisonment after
his overthrow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny)
1975 Jul 8, Israeli premier
Yitzhak Rabin began a 4-day visit to West-Germany.
(http://tinyurl.com/4c5zyo)
1975 Aug 17, Sig Arno (b.1895),
German film actor (My Friend Irma), died in Hamburg, Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Arno)
1975 The German film Ali: "Fear
Eats the Soul" was directed by Reiner Werner Fassbinder.
(SFEC, 10/11/97, DB p.35)
1975 German film director Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made "Fox and His Friends."
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E5)
1975 Richard Weize of Hamburg
founded Bear Family Records, dedicated to the preservation of American
country music.
(WSJ, 9/11/98, p.W3)
1975 With the fall of Saigon about
10,000 Vietnamese arrived in west Germany.
(SFC, 9/15/96, p.A14)
1975-1985 Lothar Kipke served as the head doctor of
the East German Swimming Federation and oversaw a program of doping
swimmers with anabolic steroids. In 2000 he was convicted on charges of
doping and causing bodily harm to 58 swimmers. Other former officials
were also scheduled for trial.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A1,14)
1976 Feb 1, Werner C. Heisenberg
(b.1901), physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1932), died in Germany. In
1993 Thomas Powers authored "Heisenberg’s War," in which he argued that
Heisenberg destroyed the German atomic project from within. Niels Bohr
later countered the argument with personal documentation.
(SFC, 2/7/02,
p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg)
1976 Apr 1, Max Ernst (b.1891),
German-French surrealist painter, sculptor, died in Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ernst)
1976 May 9, Ulrike Meinhof
(b.1934), co-leader of the Baader-Meinhof gang, committed suicide in
German prison.
(SFC, 1/10/01, p.A8)(WSJ, 4/3/09,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof)
1976 May 26, Martin Heidegger
(b.1889), German philosopher (Holzweg), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger)
1976 Aug 15, Former SS Colonel
Herbert Kappler dramatically escaped from prison hospital in Rome with
the aid of his wife and taken to Germany.
(http://tinyurl.com/yvulbh)
1976 Aug 22, Oskar Brusewitz
(b.1929), East German Lutheran vicar, died after having set himself on
fire on August 18 to protest the repression of religion.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Br%C3%BCsewitz)
1976 Paul Bowles, German
composer and writer who lived in Tangiers, wrote his short story Allal.
In 1996 three of Bowles’ stories were made into a film titled
"Halfmoon" by Frieder Schlaich and Irene von Alberti. Bertolucci had
earlier transferred his novel "The Sheltering Sky" into film. A
biography of Bowles by Millicint Dillon, "You Are Not I: A Portrait of
Paul Bowles" was published in 1998.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C3)(SFEC, 4/5/98, BR p.3)
1976 Ruth Werner, Communist spy in
Britain during WW II, authored her autobiography in East Germany:
"Sonya’s Report."
(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1976 Georg Frey (b.1902), Bavarian
clothing manufacturer, died. He assembled a collection of 90,000
beetles from around the globe before his death in this year. As a
wealthy businessman, Frey was able to create (in 1950) his own
Coleoptera museum, the Museum G. Frey, which has long been recognized
as the world's largest and most extensive private collection of beetles.
(WSJ, 8/17/95,
p.B-1)(http://www-museum.unl.edu/research/entomology/workers/GFrey.htm)
1977 Jan 11, France set off an
international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of
involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich
Olympics. In 1999 Mohammed Oudeh, aka Abu Daoud, published an
autobiography in France in which he admitted to playing a mastermind
role in the 1972 Munich hostage episode.
(AP, 1/11/98)(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)
1977 Apr 7, The RAF gunned down
Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver,
Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new
DNA evidence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist
terrorist on suspicion of involvement in the slayings. Becker had been
arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police.
Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on
charges of involvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of
armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was
sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges
by German President Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)(AP, 8/28/09)
1977 Apr 28, Andreas Baader and
members of Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the "Red Army Faction,"
were jailed for life after a trial lasting nearly 2 years in Stuttgart,
Germany.
(http://www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 May 5, Ludwig Erhard
(b.1897)), German minister of Economic Affairs (CDU), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Erhard)
1977 Aug 23, Marxist philosopher
Rudolf Bahro was imprisoned in German DR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bahro)
1977 Sep 5, West German
industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer was kidnapped in Cologne by members
of the Baader-Meinhof gang. His security escorts were killed. Schleyer
was later killed by his captors. Schleyer was the president of the
German Employers Federation.
(AP, 9/5/97)(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A1,8)
1977 Oct 13, A Lufthansa Boeing
737, bound for Frankfurt, was hijacked by Palestinians shortly after
take-off. The plane is diverted to Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Almost all
of the passengers are German vacationers. "This is Captain Martyr
Mohammed speaking," announces one of the hijackers to the Rome
air-traffic controllers. "The group I represent demands the release of
our comrades in German prisons [see Oct 18].
(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 Oct 18, In West Germany 3
Baader-Meinhof gang members killed themselves in prison. Gudrun Ensslin
(b.1940), a founding leader of the Red Army Faction (RAF), died in
prison. Ensslin's life story was later fictionalized in the film
“Marianne and Juliane” (1981). This date was later used as a title by
artist Gerhard Richter in a 1988 suite of 15 pictures. He created the
series of paintings titled "October 18, 1977" regarded by many as a
"eulogy or requiem" for the Baader-Meinhof group. In 1985 Stefan Aust
authored “The Baader-Meinhof Complex.” In 2009 Aust published an
updated version titled Baader-Meinhof: the Inside Story of the R.A.F.”
(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A19)(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.A11)(WSJ,
4/3/09, p.A15)(Econ, 5/30/09,
p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrun_Ensslin)
1977 Oct 18, West German commandos
stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner that was on the ground in
Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the
four hijackers, Palestinians of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. In 1996 Suhaila al-Sayeh was sentenced to 12 years in prison
by a German court.
(SFC, 11/20/96, p.A17)(AP, 10/17/07)
1977 Oct 19, The body of West
German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, who had been kidnapped by
left-wing extremists, was found in the trunk of a car in Mulhouse,
France.
(AP, 10/19/97)
1977 A documentary was made on
film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)
1977 Rudolf Bahro (d.1997 at 62),
Marxist reformer, smuggled his book out of East Germany and was
arrested and sentenced to 8 years in prison. He wrote: "The
Alternative: A Criticism of the Real Socialism." He was released in
1979 and allowed to resettle in West Germany in 1980.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.B12)
1978 Apr 7, A Gutenberg bible sold
for a record $2.2 million in NYC. It was bought by Martin Breslauer for
the state museum of Baden Wurttemberg.
(www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=35363264&aid=frg)
1978 May 31, Hanna Hoch (b.1889),
German photomontage artist of the Berlin Dada movement, died. Her work
included "Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar
Beer-Belly Epoch of Germany," (1919-1920).
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.E3)(SSFC, 1/27/02,
p.C7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch)
1978 Aug 26, Sigmund Jahn became
the first German in space when he blasted off aboard Russia’s Soyuz 31.
(RTH, 8/26/99)
1978 Sep 15, Willy Messerschmitt
(b.1898), German aircraft builder, died in Munich.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Messerschmitt)
1978 Sep 19, Rolf Gunther, East
German priest, died from self immolation.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1978 Film director Rainer Werner
Fassbinder made "The Marriage of Maria Braun."
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)
1978 German film director Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made "In a Year of 13 Moons."
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E5)
1978 Gerhard Wessel (1913-2002),
head of the West German BND intelligence agency since 1968, retired. He
was succeeded by Klaus Kinkel.
(SFC, 8/3/02, p.A18)
1979 Feb 7, Josef Mengele
(b.1911), Nazi concentration camp doctor and medical experimenter,
accidentally drowned in Bertioga, Brazil. He was secretly buried in
another man's grave in Brazil. [See Jun 6, 1985] In 1985 his identity
was confirmed by DNA.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele)
1979 Jun 1, Werner Forssman,
German urologist, (Nobel 1956), died. He was the first to catheterize a
human heart (his own). (MC, 6/1/02)
1979-1980 German film director Rainer Werner
Fassbinder made "Berlin Alexanderplatz," a 15-hour TV opus on Germany
between the wars. It was based on Alfred Doblin's great modernist novel.
(WSJ, 1/14/97,
p.A16)(www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=411)
1980 Mar 5, Winifred Wagner (82),
English-born head of the German Wagner family, died in Uberlingen. In
2006 Brigitte Hamann authored “Winifred Wagner, A Life at the Heart of
Hitler’s Bayreuth.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Wagner)(SFC,
12/13/06, p.F2)
1980 Sep 26, A bomb attack at the
Oktoberfest in Munich killed 13 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest)
1980 Anselm Kiefer created his
work "Brünnhilde Sleeps" and "Kyffhäuser."
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1980 Film director Rainer Werner
Fassbinder made "Lili Marleen."
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.E5)
1980 Audi introduced its
all-wheel-drive Quattro Coupe.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1981 Mar 6, In Lubeck, Germany,
Klaus Grabowski, a child molester, was shot and killed by the mother of
a girl he had molested and strangled. Grabowski had earlier avoided a
life sentence by agreeing to castration.
(http://tinyurl.com/3dgxwq)
1981 Apr 23, An estimated 1
million West German metal workers staged a warning strike as
3-month-old negotiations stalled.
(http://tinyurl.com/2pwxbk)
1981 Jul 1, The Symphony in F by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K.19a), discovered in 1980, debuted in Munich.
(http://tinyurl.com/2lunn3)
1981 The German film "Lola" was
directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_%28film%29)
1981 The Fraunhofer Institute for
Solar Energy Systems was founded in Freiburg, Germany, and a number of
similar facilities followed. By 2007 Fraunhofer employed some 500
people and was Europe's largest solar energy research institute.
(AP, 7/20/07)
1981 Friedrich Karl Flick
(1927-2006), Austrian billionaire industrialist, became embroiled in a
major postwar political party financing scandal (the Flick Affair) when
it surfaced that some of his managers had given millions of German
marks to German political parties. Flick sold his company to Deutsche
Bank in 1985.
(AP, 10/6/06)
1982 Mar 29, Carl Orff (b.1895),
German composer (Carmina Burana), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Orff)
1982 Apr 9, Robert H.G. Havemann
(b.1910), East German chemist and dissident, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Havemann)
1982 May 10, Peter Weiss (b.1916),
German playwright (Marat-Sade), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Weiss)
1982 Jun 10, Rainer Werner
Fassbinder (b.1945), German film director, died.
(WSJ, 1/14/97,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder)
1982 Oct 1, West Germany's
Parliament ousted Helmut Schmidt for Helmut Kohl. Kohl, head of the
Christian Democratic Union, became Chancellor following the collapse of
the Social Democratic led coalition. He served until 1998.
(Hem., 3/97, p.121)(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)(WSJ, 1/19/00,
p.A18)
1982 Nov 11, West German
authorities captured Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a member of the Red Army
Faction, as she went to an arms cache in woods near Frankfurt. She was
convicted in 1985 of involvement in nine murders, including those of
West German chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and of
Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the country's industry federation.
Mohnhaupt (57) was released in 2007 after serving 24 years of a life
sentence.
(AP, 2/12/07)
1982 Nov 16, Christian Klar
(b.1952), a leading member of the German Red Army Faction, was arrested
close to Hamburg. In the following trials he was convicted for his
involvement in the 1977 murders of Siegfried Buback, Jurgen Ponto and
Hanns-Martin Schleyer together with fellow RAF member Brigitte
Mohnhaupt. Klar was set for release in Jan, 2009, after serving 26
years in prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Klar)(AP,
11/24/08)
1982 Anselm Kiefer created his
work "The Unknown Masterpiece."
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1982 John Cage wrote a 75-minute
play for German radio called "James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie:
An Alphabet."
(WSJ, 2/28/02, p.A16)
1982 The German film "Das Boot"
with Jurgen Prochnow was produced. An extended version was released in
1997. It was directed by Wolfgang Peterson.
(SFC, 4/4/97, p.C8)
1982 The film "The White Rose" was
by German director Michael Verhoeven.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.37)
1982 The German Otto family
purchased the Chicago-based Spiegel catalog retailer.
(WSJ, 3/2/04, p.A6)
1982 Klaus Jacobs (1936-2008),
head of the German coffee dealer Jacobs AG, orchestrated the takeover
of Switzerland’s Interfood SA, maker of the Toblerone candy bar. In
1990 Philip Morris bought Jacobs Suchard for $3.8 billion. Klaus went
on to buy a Swiss staffing firm and in 1996 merged it with France’s
Ecco SA to form Adecco SA, which became one of the world’s largest
staffing firms.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.A12)
1983 Feb 5, Former Nazi Gestapo
official Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), expelled from Bolivia, was brought
to trial in Lyon, France. He was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison.
(AP, 2/5/03)(www.izieu.com/new_page_7.htm)
1983 Mar 6, Helmut Kohl's CDU/CSU
won West German parliament elections.
(www.germanculture.com.ua/march/march6.htm)
1983 Apr 22, In Germany the bogus
“Hitler Diaries” was published by Stern Magazine. Stern magazine
announced the discovery of a 60 volume personal diary written by Adolph
Hitler. It turned out to be a hoax.
(SFC, 10/15/96, p.A19)(AP, 4/22/07)
1983 Jun 27, Maxie Anderson and
Don Ida died in West Germany during a balloon race.
(http://tinyurl.com/2r37bg)
1983 Christa Wolf, East German
writer, authored her novel “Cassandra.”
(WSJ, 3/10/07, p.P6)
1983 The German film "Straight
Through the Heart" was directed by Doris Dorrie, her debut.
(SSFC, 1/14/01, DB p.37)
1983 The French cultural center in
West Berlin was bombed. One person was killed and 23 injured. The
attack was attributed to Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)
1983 Bayer, a German drug maker,
patented the active ingredient of the antibiotic Cipro.
(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)
1984 Jan 28, A record 295,000
dominoes toppled at Fuerth, W. Germany.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1984 Mar 6, Martin Niemoller (92),
German U-boat captain, anti-Nazi minister, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller)
1984 Aug 22, The last Volkswagen
Rabbit was produced.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1984 Aug 4, In Germany Robert
Brown (24), a former American soldier, struck Nicola Stiel (19) and
raped her, then strangled her to prevent her from reporting the rape.
In 2009 Brown was extradited to Germany to face charges that he raped
and murdered the woman near where he worked on a US military base in
Hesse state.
(AP, 8/17/09)
1984 Nov 28, Hans Speidel
(b.1897), German general and NATO-supreme commander (1957-63), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel)
1984 Martin Kippenberger made his
oil, silicon on canvas "For the Life of Me, I Can’t See Any Swastikas."
(SFEC, 2/1/98, BR p.6)
1984 German choreographer Pina
Bausch first brought her absurdist dance-dramas to New York.
(WSJ, 10/29/97, p.A20)
1985 May 5, President Reagan kept
a promise to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl by leading a
wreath-laying ceremony at the military cemetery in Bitburg.
(AP, 5/5/05)
1985 Jun 6, Authorities in Brazil
exhumed a body later identified as the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele,
the notorious "Angel of Death" of the Nazi Holocaust near Sao Paolo,
Brazil.
(AP, 6/6/97)(HN, 6/6/98)
1985 Jun 21, American, Brazilian
and West German scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in
Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.
(AP, 6/21/97)(www.paperlessarchives.com/mengele.html)
1985 Jul 30, Germaine Krull
(b.1897), Polish born German photographer, died.
(SFEM, 4/9/00,
p.4)(www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/kr.htm)
1985 Aug 7, Spc. Edward Pimental
(20), a US Army soldier, left a discotheque in the western German city
of Wiesbaden with a woman and was soon killed. Terrorists used
Pimental's ID card to enter the US Rhein-Main air base in Frankfurt.
The following day, explosives packed in a Volkswagen rocked the parking
lot behind the base headquarters. Two Americans were killed and 23
people were injured. In 1994 a Frankfurt court found Eva Haule guilty
of killing Pimental. In 1996 a judge said Birgit Hogefeld, who was also
convicted in the Pimental killing and the Rhein-Main bombing, had lured
Pimental out of the disco. In 2007 Haule (53) was released from jail
after serving 21 years of a life sentence.
(AP, 8/17/07)
1985 Sep 22, Axel Springer
(b.1912), German newspaper magnate (Bild Zeitung), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer)
1985 Sep 30, Simone Signoret,
German-French actress (Room at Top, Gina), died at 64.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0797531/)
1985 Vladimir Putin, Soviet KGB
officer, was assigned to recruit spies in Dresden, East Germany.
(WSJ, 2/23/05, p.A14)
1985 A US airbase in Frankfurt was
bombed and Airman 1st Class Frank Scarton and Becky Jo Bristol were
killed. Edward Pimentel was killed before the bombing in order to get
his ID card. In 1996 Birgit Hogefeld, a member of the far-left RAF, was
convicted of involvement and jailed for life.
(SFC, 11/6/96, p.A25)
1986 Apr 5, A Berlin nightclub was
bombed. US Sgt. Kenneth Ford (21) and Nermin Hannay (29) died at the
scene. Sgt. James Goins (25) died later in hospital. 230 people were
injured. Palestinian Yasser Shraydi (Chraidi) was suspected of playing
a lead role in the bombing of the La Belle discotheque. In 1996 he was
extradited from Lebanon to face charges in Germany. In 1996 Andrea
Hasler was arrested in Greece and extradited to Germany. Also a woman
named Verena Chanaa, suspected of planting the bomb, and her former
husband named Ali Chanaa were arrested in Berlin. In 1997 Musbah
Abulghasen Eter was arrested by Italian police in Rome in connection
with the bombing. In 2001 V. Chanaa was sentenced to 14 years, A.
Chanaa and Eter were sentenced to 12 years, and Chraidi was sentenced
to 14 years. Libya was implicated and in 2004 agreed to pay $35 million
in compensation.
(SFC, 5/234/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A12)(WSJ,
8/28/97, p.A1)(SFC, 8/28/97, p.C3)(SFC, 11/14/01, p.A18)(AP, 9/3/04)
1986 Jun 19, Argentina beat West
Germany 3-2 in soccer's 13th World Cup in Mexico.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FIFA_World_Cup)
1986 Nov 13, Rudolf Schock
(b.1915), German opera and operetta singer, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0774301/)
1986 Dec 12, Russian Tupolev-134
crashed in East Berlin and 70 people were killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)
1986 Udo Zimmermann, German
composer, created his opera “Die Weise Rose” (The White Rose). The
named was taken from a 1940s anti-Nazi movement.
(SFC, 1/12/05, p.E1)
1986 The German film "Paradise"
was directed by Doris Dorrie.
(SSFC, 1/14/01, DB p.37)
1987 Jan 13, West German police
arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi at the Frankfurt airport, when customs
officials discovered liquid explosives in his luggage. The Lebanese man
was convicted and served a life sentence in Germany for the 1985
hijacking of a TWA jetliner and killing of a U.S. Navy diver. Although
convicted and sentenced to life, Hamadi was paroled by Germany in
December 2005.
(AP, 12/20/05)(AP, 1/13/07)
1987 Mar 23, West Germany SPD
chairman Willy Brandt resigned.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1987 May 1, During a visit
to West Germany, Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born
Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at
Auschwitz.
(AP, 5/1/97)
1987 Jun 12, President Reagan,
during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, publicly
challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Brandenburg Gate:
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
(AP, 6/12/97)(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.AW17)
1987 Jul 2, Karl Linnas, accused
Nazi, died of heart failure in Leningrad Russia. In 1962 he was
convicted in Estonia of being a Nazi war criminal and sentenced to
death in absentia.
(http://tinyurl.com/mqvzq)
1987 Aug 17, Rudolf Hess, the last
member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, died at a Berlin hospital near
Spandau Prison at age 93, having apparently committed suicide by
strangling himself with an electrical cord. His family claims that he
was murdered [see May 10, 1941].
(AP, 8/17/97)(SFEC, 8/17/97, p.A4)
1987 Aug 26, In an attempt to
eliminate a superpower stumbling block, West German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl said his country would destroy its 72 Pershing 1A rockets if
Washington and Moscow scrapped all their intermediate-range nuclear
weapons.
(AP, 8/26/97)
1987 Sep 2, West German pilot
Mathias Rust, who flew a private plane from Helsinki, Finland, to
Moscow's Red Square, went on trial in the Soviet capital. Rust, who was
convicted and given a four-year sentence, was released Aug. 3, 1988.
(AP, 9/2/97)
1987 Sep 6, Benjamin and Patrick
Binder, twin 7-month-old brothers from Ulm, West Germany, who were
joined at the head, were separated after 22 hours of surgery by doctors
at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
(AP, 9/6/97)
1987 Sep 7, Erich Honecker became
the first East German head of state to visit West Germany as he arrived
for a five-day visit.
(AP, 9/7/97)
1987 Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003),
German director, published her autobiography: "Leni Riefenstahl: A
Memoir."
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.B5)
1987 Plans were made for a new
Kulturforum museum complex in Berlin. Construction began in March 1992.
(WSJ, 7/29/98, p.A13)
1988 Feb 27, Katarina Witt of East
Germany won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Winter
Olympics in Calgary, Canada, with Elizabeth Manley of Canada placing
second and Debi Thomas of the United States, third. Debi Thomas became
the first African American to win a medal at the Winter Olympics.
(AP, 2/27/98)(HN, 2/27/99)
1988 Mar 9, Kurt Georg Kiesinger
(b.1904), West German chancellor (1966-69), died.
(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Kurt_Georg_Kiesinger)
1988 Jun 19, Michael Jackson led a
rock concert in West Berlin.
(AP, 7/30/09)
1988 Aug 28, At least 40 people
were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show
at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany, sending flaming debris
into the crowd of spectators. Over the next 2 months the death toll
rose to 69.
(AP,
8/28/98)(www.sos.se/sos/publ/REFERENG/9003031E.htm)
1988 Sep 10, Steffi Graf of West
Germany achieved tennis' first Grand Slam since Margaret Court in 1970
by winning the U.S. Open women's final.
(AP, 9/10/98)
1988 Oct 3, Franz Josef Strauss
(b.1915), German defense minister (1956-62), died at 73.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strau%C3%9F)
1988 Oct 9, Felix Wankel (b.1902),
developer of Wankel rotary engine, died in Germany.
(http://library.thinkquest.org/C006011/english/sites/wankel_bio.php3?v=2)
1988 Oct 19, Three West Germans
were named winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry; three Americans
received the Nobel Prize in physics.
(AP, 10/19/98)
1988 The film "Herbstmilch" was
directed by Joseph Vilsmaiar. It was about a woman’s Bavarian country
childhood.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)
1988 Matthias Warnig, East German
Stasi officer, was assigned to recruit spies in Duesseldorf, West
Germany.
(WSJ, 2/23/05, p.A14)
1988 There was an attempted murder
of Hans Titmeyer, later chief of the Bundesbank. Birgit Hogefeld, RAF
member, was later convicted of taking part.
(WSJ, 11/6/96, p.A1)
1988 BMW began selling the 325iX
all-wheel-drive sports sedan in the US. It stopped 3 years later.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1988 Albert Fert of France and
Peter Grunberg of Germany independently discovered the phenomenon of
giant magnetoresistance. It was later adopted for use in computer
hard-drives. In 2007 they won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their
discovery.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.94)
1989 Jan 29, West German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union suffered a major
setback in West Berlin municipal elections.
(AP, 1/29/99)
1989 May 17, A court in Frankfurt,
West Germany, sentenced Mohammed Ali Hamadi to life in prison for his
role in the 1985 TWA hijacking.
(AP, 5/17/99)
1989 May 31, Pres. G.W. Bush met
with Chancellor Kohl and addressed the citizens of Mainz, Germany. He
offered Germany a “partnership in leadership.”
(Econ, 7/8/06,
p.43)(http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga6-890531.htm)
1989 Jul 9, West German tennis
players Steffi Graf and Boris Becker won the women's and men's singles
titles at Wimbledon.
(AP, 7/9/99)
1989 Aug 19, The "Pan-European
Picnic" helped precipitate the fall nearly three months later of the
Berlin Wall. Members of Hungary's budding opposition organized a picnic
at the border with Austria to press for greater political freedom and
promote friendship with their Western neighbors. Some 600 East Germans
got word of the event and turned up among the estimated 10,000
participants. They took advantage of the excursion to escape to Austria.
(AP, 8/19/09)
1989 Sep 10, Hungary gave
permission for thousands of East German refugees and visitors to
emigrate to West Germany.
(AP, 9/10/99)
1989 Sep 30, Thousands of East
Germans who had sought refuge in West German embassies in
Czechoslovakia and Poland began emigrating under an accord between
Soviet bloc and NATO nations.
(AP, 9/30/99)
1989 Oct 1, Thousands of East
Germans received a triumphal welcome in West Germany after the
communist government agreed to let them leave for the West.
(AP, 10/1/99)
1989 Oct 2, Nearly 10,000 people
marched through Leipzig, East Germany, demanding legalization of
opposition groups and adoption of democratic reforms in the country's
largest protest since 1953.
(AP, 10/2/99)
1989 Oct 3, In a move to stem the
flow of refugees to the West, East Germany suspended unrestricted
travel to Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 10/3/99)
1989 Oct 18, In East Germany after
18 years in power, Erich Honecker resigned from his offices as head of
state and party leader. He was succeeded by Egon Krenz.
(AP,
10/18/97)(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)(http://tinyurl.com/84fnq)
1989 Oct
24, In East Germany Egon Krenz assumed the chairmanship of the Council
of State. [see Dec 3,6]
(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)
1989 Nov 1, East Germany reopened
its border with Czechoslovakia, prompting tens of thousands of refugees
to flee to the West.
(AP, 11/1/99)
1989 Nov 3, East German leader
Egon Krenz delivered a nationally broadcast speech in which he promised
sweeping economic and political reforms and called on East Germans to
stay.
(AP, 11/3/99)
1989 Nov 4, Up to a million East
Germans filled the streets of East Berlin for a pro-democracy rally.
(AP, 11/4/99)
1989 Nov 8, In an attempt to
strengthen his 3-week-old leadership, East German Communist Party chief
Egon Krenz ousted the old guard of the ruling Politburo, replacing them
with reformers.
(AP, 11/8/99)
1989 Nov 9, The Berlin Wall was
broke open. Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing
citizens to travel freely to the West. Joyous Germans danced atop the
Berlin Wall. Over its 28-year history at least 136 people were
confirmed killed trying to cross the Wall into West Berlin, according
to official figures. However, a prominent victims' group claimed that
more than 200 people were killed trying to flee from East to West
Berlin. Peter Wyden in this year authored "Wall: The Inside Story of
Divided Berlin." In 2004 William F. Buckley authored "The Fall of the
Berlin Wall."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall)(SFC,
5/30/96, p.A12)(AP, 11/9/97)(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.A27)(WSJ, 3/18/04,
p.D10)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.25)
1989 Nov 10, Workers began
punching a hole in the Berlin Wall, a day after East Germany abolished
its border restrictions.
(AP, 11/10/99)
1989 Nov 11, In a telephone
conversation with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, East German
leader Egon Krenz ruled out any possibility reunification.
(AP, 11/11/99)
1989 Nov 30, Alfred Herrhausen,
chairman of West Germany's largest bank, was killed in a bombing
claimed by the Red Army Faction. No Red Army member was charged and in
2007 officials began to focus on Stasi, the East German police.
(AP, 11/30/99)(Econ, 4/29/06, p.88)(WSJ, 9/15/07,
p.A1)
1989 Dec 1, East Germany's
Parliament abolished the Communist Party's constitutional guarantee of
supremacy.
(AP, 12/1/99)
1989 Dec
3, The East German SED Politburo resigned. 3 days later Communist
leader Egon Krenz stepped down as Chairman of the Council of State.
(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)
1989 Dec 5, East Germany's former
leaders, including ousted Communist Party chief Erich Honecker, were
placed under house arrest.
(AP, 12/5/97)
1989 Dec
6, Egon Krenz resigned as leader of East Germany. In 1997 Krenz was
convicted with 2 colleagues of manslaughter for the shooting deaths of
those who tried to flee across the Berlin Wall prior to its demise.
(WSJ, 11/9/99, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)
1989 Dec 7, East Germany's
Communist Party agreed to cooperate with the opposition in paving the
way for free elections and a revised constitution.
(AP, 12/7/99)
1989 In Berlin, Germany, the Love
Parade festival was begun to celebrate techno music.
(SFC, 8/18/97, p.E4)
1989 Mercedes-Benz began building
all-wheel E-Class cars.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1989-1991 In 1999 Angela E. Stent authored "Russia
and Germany Reborn," which focused on this period.
(WSJ, 8/5/99, p.A16)
1990 Feb 1, East Germany's
Communist premier, Hans Modrow, appealed for negotiations with West
Germany to forge a "united fatherland."
(AP, 2/1/00)
1990 Feb 13, At a conference in
Ottawa, the United States and its European allies forged agreement with
the Soviet Union and East Germany on a two-stage formula to reunite
Germany.
(AP, 2/13/00)
1990 Feb, In Germany a group of
artists occupied Tacheles, a building in East Berlin, two months before
it was scheduled for demolition. The squatters saved it by getting the
city to declare it a historic landmark. Their lease ended Dec. 31,
2008, and residents were advised to move out though no court order was
issued.
(AP, 2/13/09)
1990 Mar 18, An alliance of
conservative parties won a surprising victory over the Communists in
East Germany's first free elections.
(AP, 3/18/00)
1990 Apr 12, In its first meeting,
East Germany's first democratically elected parliament acknowledged
responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust, and asked the forgiveness of
Jews and others who had suffered.
(AP, 4/12/00)
1990 Apr 18, A Franco-German
proposal was made at the Dublin summit for the political union of the
12 European Community member countries.
(www.unesco.org/mitterrand/anglais/ieuroues.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/36pexa)
1990 Apr 24, West and East Germany
agreed to merge currency and economies on July 1.
(www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/1990/1990-3-3.htm)
1990 May 18, East and West Germany
signed a monetary union treaty.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1990 Jun 13, East German border
guards and demolition experts from the Bundeswehr started the official
demolition of the Berlin Wall.
(www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=26512)
1990 Jul 1, East Germans lined up
to obtain West German deutsche marks as a state treaty unifying the
monetary and economic systems of the two Germanys went into effect.
(AP, 7/1/00)
1990 Jul 8, West Germany won the
World Cup soccer championship by defeating Argentina, 1-to-0.
(AP, 7/8/00)
1990 Jul 8, Sweden’s Stefan Edberg
beat Boris Becker of West Germany to capture his second men’s tennis
championship at Wimbledon.
(AP, 7/8/00)
1990 Jul 14, West German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in Moscow for talks with Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev that were aimed at soothing Kremlin
concerns about German unification.
(AP, 7/14/00)
1990 Jul 15, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev and visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
held talks on the issue of a united Germany’s membership in NATO.
(AP, 7/15/00)
1990 Jul 15, East Germany opened
its borders fully to Jews from the former Soviet republics.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.48)
1990 Jul 16, Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced that
Moscow had agreed to drop its objection to a united Germany’s
membership in NATO.
(AP, 7/16/00)
1990 Jul 17, The seven nations
negotiating German unification reached agreement in Paris on Poland’s
permanent border, clearing the way for the merger of East and West
Germany.
(AP, 7/17/00)
1990 Aug 23, East and West Germany
announced that they would unite Oct 3.
(www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/1990/1990-2-1.htm)
1990 Aug 28, German spy Juergen
Mohamed Gietler was arrested for passing military information to Iraq.
He provided Iraq with intelligence reports on US military plans that
included what the West knew of Iraqi Scud-B missile sites. He was
convicted in a secret trial in 1991, sentenced to 5 years in prison and
released in 1994 after which he moved to Egypt.
(SFC,11/18/97, p.B1)(SFC,12/24/97, p.A6)
1990 Aug 31, East & West
Germany signed a treaty to join legal & political systems.
(http://tinyurl.com/omusa)
1990 Sep 12, Representatives of
the World War Two allies and West and East Germany signed the Two Plus
Four Treaty in Moscow giving international sanction to German unity.
(AP,
9/12/00)(www.foothill.fhda.edu/divisions/unification/finalset.html)
1990 Sep 24, East Germany signed a
treaty with the Soviet Union ending its membership in the Warsaw Pact.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact)
1990 Sep 26, Alberto Moravia,
Italian writer (Woman in Red), died at 82.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1990 Oct 3, West Germany and
East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation
of a new unified country. Formal reunification took place after a
unification treaty was ratified by the Federal Republic‘s Bundestag and
the German Democratic Republic‘s People‘s Chamber in September.
(AP, 10/3/97)(HN, 10/3/98)(HNQ, 11/10/99)
1990 Oct 4, For the first time in
nearly six decades, German lawmakers met in the Reichstag for the first
meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.
(AP, 10/4/00)
1990 Oct, French Pres. Francois
Mitterand called for an economic government of Europe during a
Franco-German summit in Paris.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.58)
1990 Nov 9, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a historic non-aggression treaty with
Germany, winning praise from German leaders in Bonn for his role in the
peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall.
(AP, 11/9/00)
1990 Dec 2, Chancellor Helmut
Kohl’s center-right coalition easily won the first free all-German
elections since 1932.
(AP, 12/2/00)
1990 The film "The Nasty Girl" was
by German director Michael Verhoeven.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.37)
1990 Chancellor Kohl defeated
Oskar Lafontaine, governor of the Saar state.
(WSJ, 11/17/95, p.A-10)
1990 The federal government
decided that old families (Junkers) must buy back their expropriated
property if they wanted to return to East Germany.
(WSJ, 5/15/02, p.A8)
1990 The files of Stasi, the
East German state security police, were opened to the public. The East
German state security police had attempted to destroy all records but
shredding machines overheated and much evidence was torn up by hand. A
publicly funded project was begun to reconstruct the shredded evidence.
(WSJ, 12/27/96, p.A6)(WSJ, 2/4/97, p.A14)
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