Click play for a listen to some Weimar era classical music composed in Germany.
Use the above to easily navigate my exhibit.
Pictured is a German passport indicating citizenship. ID Panel: Object 11
Welcome to my exhibit detailing the complex past of German citizenship over the course of the 20th century. I have divided this time table into four distinct periods: the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, post-war Germany, and Germany today. Before I dive directly into the fray, how about some background? Today German is known as one of Europe’s most diverse countries, but was this always the case? Mass immigration to Germany was nearly non-existent before 1871 when the area was unified and rapidly industrialized because of a lack of prospect compared to the nearby nation states of Great Britain, Spain, and France. This resulted in a highly homogenous society until after the first world war when mass displacement and refugees from the Russian Civil War and Soviet-Baltic wars meant a new influx of minorities for the fledgling Weimar Republic entering the 1920s. Germany’s first attempt at democracy would see astounding success in one of the most progressive constitutions ever written, detailing that, “Citizens are men and women residing within Germany older than 20 years,”[1] leaving little room for exclusion such as is present in the American constitution. However, entering the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party came into power, beginning a twelve-year spree of barbaric regression regarding human rights, denying the citizenship of the Baltic peoples, Slavs, Jews, Homosexuals, women, and more. After a brief Occupation by Allied Powers, West Germany once again found herself in a highly homogenous state because of Hitler’s attempts to “self-cleanse” the country. However, due to the exhaustion of manpower caused by the second world war, a new form of mass immigration in the form of “Gastarbeiteren” would soon take place, including peoples from various Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, and Greece to fulfill the labor demand of German factories. This combined with the later influx of Eastern European Germans locked behind the Soviet iron curtain after the fall of the Berlin Wall would see Germany enter the 21st century as an incredibly diverse society. This exhibit is meant to display that Germany has transformed itself from one of the most homogeneous cultures in Europe to one of the most diverse cultures in the world.
[1] The Weimar Constitution was the constitution of the Weimar Republic of Germany written by a council formed of members of the 1918-1919 provisional German government and ratified by the signature of Friedrich Ebert on August 11, 1919.