Germany 1999

In 1999, the population of Germany was estimated at approximately 82 million people. The economy of the country is based largely on industry and services. Its main industries are automotive, chemicals, engineering and electronics. Germany has a long history of strong foreign relations with other countries in Europe and beyond. In terms of politics, Germany has a federal parliamentary system with Gerhard Schroeder as Chancellor since 1998. He was re-elected in 1998 for his first term in office and his Social Democratic Party continued to hold a majority in Parliament. See ethnicityology for Germany in the year of 2018.

Yearbook 1999

Germany 1999

Germany. In May, Germany got a new president, Social Democrat Johannes Rau, who succeeded Christian Democrat Roman Herzog. For the first time since World War II and ten years after the fall of the Berlin, in the spring, Berlin became the seat of the government again. The Bundestag (Parliament) moved from Bonn into Berlin’s legendary old Parliament House, which had received a substantial facelift, similar to the neighborhoods where the government offices moved. Visit Countryaah official website to get information about the capital city of Germany. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s government office completed the move to the capital in August just days before the sixtieth anniversary of the German march in Poland on September 1, 1939, which started the Second World War.

  • Also see Abbreviationfinder.org to see the acronym of DEU which stands for Germany and other definitions of this 3-letter abbreviation.

Map of Germany Berlin in English

Schröder’s red-green coalition government, consisting of social democrats and environmental parties, was mostly cancerous due to internal contradictions and gaps between the parties and further phalanges within them. In March, leftist Oskar Lafontaine left his post following a government quarrel, both as Finance Minister and as Social Democratic Party Chairman. Schröder appointed Hessen’s former head of government, Hans Eichel, as finance minister and Schröder himself was elected party chairman. When Lafontaine – called Red Oskar – resigned, the short-term effect was that the Frankfurt Stock Exchange rose and interest rates fell, but that did not stop German zigzag policy. In the vernacular, Schröder came to be called the “Mambo Chancellor” for his political churning. At the end of the summer, the government agreed on a austerity package with savings of D-30 billion (SEK 133.6 billion) for the coming financial year. Among other things, the savings would apply to pension development, where pensions would be linked to the rate of inflation rather than previously to wage growth. Shortly thereafter, the press leaked that the Ministry of Labor had put forward a secret strategy to change its footing. After all, pensions would be slightly increased so that the government could appease the union and the workers’ voters. Schröder did not object. At the large trade union organization IG Metall’s congress, Schröder was bowed out when he explained that it was not possible to finance the metal workers’ pension requirements at the age of 60. Shortly thereafter, the Minister of Labor and IG Metall’s chairman went out and told them that they agreed on a retirement age at 60 years. Then suddenly Schröder thought it was good.

There was also great confusion about the government’s attitude to the left wing’s demand for a wealth tax. Sometimes you were against – sometimes for. Schröder had made many promises before the 1998 elections, but few had been realized.

The promised reform of German citizenship rules was watered down because of the opposition’s strong opposition. Previously, only one person’s blood applied to German citizenship. This meant that people with German outbreak could obtain citizenship regardless of whether they had never lived in Germany, while immigrants had a very difficult time obtaining a German passport even if they had lived in the country for a long time. Under the new law, children of immigrants can now obtain a German passport. At the age of 23, however, they must choose citizenship. Thus, it is not possible to have dual citizenship, which many, especially within the large Turkish minority, would have preferred.

Confidence in Schröder dropped during the year as a rock, and according to an opinion poll in the fall, only 23% of voters were happy with him, compared to 54% when he was elected in 1998. in several cases became a disaster for Schröder’s party. In Brandenburg, eastern Germany, the Social Democrats lost as much as 15 percentage points of the vote and had to settle for 39%, which meant they were forced to co-operate with the Christian Democrats. At the same time, the right-wing extremist DVU (Deutsche Volksunion, German People’s Union) managed to pass the five percent limit and thus gain five seats in the state parliament. At the end of the year, the German government entered into a settlement with Jewish organizations in the United States and Eastern Europe, which meant that surviving slave workers from the Second World War would receive compensation of a total of DKK 10 billion (about SEK 45 billion). The German chief negotiator explained that the settlement was necessary to avoid damaging Germany’s reputation in the world.

Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Jewish Central Council in Germany, passed away in the summer. When he took up the post in 1992, he emphasized that he primarily felt like German and was proud of his national identity. His stated goal was to eliminate the differences between German and Jewish. Bubis said that as the wounds of history healed, the Jewish element in German culture would become as self-evident as before 1933. But he was deeply disappointed by the latent anti-Semitism in Germany, and on his deathbed said he did not want to be buried in German soil. but in Israel. His remains were put to rest in Tel Aviv next to the five Israeli athletes who were murdered during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The year ended with a series of corruption scandals in which Social Democratic President Johannes Rau and former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, together with a number of prominent state politicians, figured.

After first winding down, Kohl admitted that during his 25-year leadership, his Christian Democratic Party CDU (Christdemokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union) used secret bank accounts to hide financial contributions from the authorities. He denied that it would have been a bribe for political re-services.

In the heartland of the German Social Democracy, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, revelations drew close to how leading Social Democrats had flown here and there in chartered private plans – both in the service and in private – at prices that were 25 times the usual fare. Johannes Rau, who for many years was the father of the state, was also accused of traveling with the exclusive plan. The trips were paid for by a state-controlled bank. The same bank also accounted for SEK 700,000. of the bill for Raus’s birthday is scaled when he turned 65.

Berlin (History)

Berlin, whose name is Slavic of controversial origin, was conveniently located along with the sister city of Cologne on the River Spree, which connected the Baltic Sea and Hamburg.

Berlin and Kölln each received market town rights of approx. 1230, but gradually grew together and joined the Hanseatic League. In the 1400’s. Berlin-Kölln became the residence of the Hohenzollers and developed into the largest city in the Principality of Brandenburg.

The city’s prosperity was due to the distance trade in grain and wood, but also luxury goods production such as goldsmith crafts.

During the Thirty Years’ War in the first half of the 1600’s, moved the court to Königsberg, and the city was at the same time severely affected by foreign army occupation, arson, and plague epidemics.

However, the city quickly regained its importance. From 1709, the Prussian kings had their residence in Berlin, which now became the second largest German city (after Vienna). Garrisons were established in Berlin and Cologne, and in 1786 40,000 of the 147,000 inhabitants belonged to the military.

In the 1800’s, Berlin developed into the leading German industrial city with significant production in the machinery industry (including Borsig), electrical appliances, such as AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft) and Siemens, textiles and the graphic industry (publishing houses Mosse, Ullstein and Scherl). Rapid population growth led to unbridled speculative construction with widespread barracks.

When Berlin became the “Reichshauptstadt” in 1871 with the founding of the empire, the city had 826,000 inhabitants, in 1905 2 million. A few years after a number of suburbs were merged with the city of Greater Berlin in 1920, the population was 4 million.

The implementation of the Reformation in 1539 took place under pressure from the citizens of Berlin and the city council, and religious tolerance as well as later also secular freedom became a feature of the city’s spiritual life. Persecuted Huguenots from France, Reformed and other Protestants took refuge here.

Jewish settlement is known from the 1100’s, but has been interrupted by persecutions and periods in which Jews were banned. The 18th century Jewish Enlightenment movement, led by Moses Mendelssohn, had its starting point in Berlin’s Jewish educational environment. In the Empire and the Weimar Republic, the Jewish population reached 4-5% due to significant immigration from Eastern Europe. However, it was also in the Berlin of the 1870’s that anti-Semitism was first formulated as a political program.

The Prussian kings sought to promote the art and science of the capital through the founding of the Akademie der Künste und mechanischen Wissenschaften in 1696 and the first German Akademie der Wissenschaften in 1700 under Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. With the founding of Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in 1810 according to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s reform principles, the city’s position as one of Europe’s most important centers of learning and culture was strengthened. Johan Gottlieb Fichte, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Th. Mommsen, Leopold von Ranke, GWF Hegel, Karl Marx and Søren Kierkegaard are some of those who have taught or studied in Berlin.

During the revolutionary uprisings of 1830 and 1848, riots and armed struggle broke out in Berlin, in 1848 with 200 deaths. In the following years, industrialization, the misery of the working-class neighborhoods, and the misery of the working-class neighborhoods of the big city and the social contrasts of the big city provoked a strong and radical labor movement, so that in November 1918 Berlin was the center of the Council Revolution.

The Labor parties were stronger in Berlin than in the rest of Germany, while the Nazi Party was significantly weaker. In the last free elections in November 1932, the Nazi Party received 33.1% in all of Germany, but only 22.5% in Berlin, where the Social Democrats received 23.8% and the Communist Party 37.7% of the vote.

Adolf Hitler’s takeover on 30 January 1933 was celebrated with an SA march and a torchlight procession through the Brandenburg Gate. A month later, the Reichstag burned down in Berlin, and in the following years, the city’s amusement and cultural life became uniform. The 1936 Olympics were used for large-scale propaganda for the Third Reich, and urban renewal plans under Albert Speer were to serve to glorify Hitler, who had his Reich Chancellery in the city. As the “Reichshauptstadt”, Berlin was one of the five Driver Cities.

The November 1938 pogrom – Crystal Night, which cost the city most of its Jewish shops and synagogues – instead showed the terrorist face of Nazism. With approx. 5000 of Berlin approx. 170,000 Jews survived the Holocaust.

1940-45, the Allied air bombardments greatly shaped city life, in whose large sports palace Joseph Goebbels’ 18.2.1943 proclaimed “the total war”.

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