Lesson 54 of 69 · B1, Unit 1: The wider world
A short history
For most of its history there was no single German state. The German-speaking lands were a patchwork of kingdoms, duchies, and free cities loosely held together by the Holy Roman Empire (das Heilige Römische Reich), which lasted until 1806. Germany as a nation-state was founded only in 1871.
The 20th century brought two world wars, the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust, and then four decades of division into West and East Germany. Germans talk about this history openly, and it shapes politics and public life today. This lesson gives you the vocabulary to follow those conversations, and practises the simple past and the passive you learned earlier.
By the end you can:
- name the key periods and events of German history
- say when something happened, with dates and the simple past
- understand the passive in historical descriptions: Die Mauer wurde gebaut
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