09 November 1918 9 November: Philipp Scheidemann (the Social Democratic Party of Germany) proclaims the German Republic
30 January 1933 30 January: President of the Reich, Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany
15 September 1935 15 September: Proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws (‘Nürnberger Gesetze’) at the Nazi Party Rally (‘Reichsparteitag’)
22 June 1941 22 June: With the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler starts the racist war of extermination for ‘Lebensraum’ in the East
20 July 1944 20 July: Conspirators linked with Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg attempt to overthrow the Nazi dictatorship
24 August 1944 24 August 1944 – 9 May 1945. Romania’s participation in the anti-Nazi war, alongside the Allied Coalition.
01 October 1946 1 October: Delivery of judgements against the main war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials (Nürnberger Prozess)
24 May 1949 24 May: Proclamation of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (‘Grundgesetzes der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’)
07 October 1949 7 October: The German Democratic Republic – GDR (‘Deutsche Demokratische Republik’ – DDR) is established
23 January 1963 23 January: Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle sign the German-French Treaty of Friendship
07 December 1970 Willy Brandt kneels before a Holocaust monument in Warsaw (Brandt’s ‘Kniefall von Warschau’)
17 October 1977 Night of 17 into 18 October: Suicide of RAF terrorists Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe in the Stuttgart-Stammheim jail
16 October 1978 16 October 1978: Cardinal Karol Wojtyła becomes Pope and assumes the name of John Paul II
09 November 1989 9 November: Opening of the Berlin Wall and thus of the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR
16 November 1989 Spontaneous demonstration by Bratislava university students for basic civil rights and freedoms