• Hanse

    Hansa

    League of Towns and Economic Power

    Since the 11th century the population in Europe was growing. The reason for it was, among other things, an increase in agricultural production due to a good climate.

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  • Die Franken

    Franks

    Empire in the Early Middle Ages

    The Franks presumably arose from various western Germanic tribes originally living between the Rhine and Weser rivers. In the beginning, they were not a unified tribe yet but consisted of several bands under their own leaders.

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  • Kelten

    Celts

    History and Culture

    The term “Celts“ refers to a great number of different ethnic groups. So we do not speak of one “Celtic people”, at any rate not according to modern ethnic criteria, but rather of tribes within the circle of Celtic culture.

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  • Napoleon Bonaparte

    Napoleon Bonaparte

    Rise and Fall

    Napoleon Bonaparte shaped France and Europe like no other.

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  • Dreißigjähriger Krieg

    Thirty Years’ War

    Causes, Development, Consequences

    For thirty years war was waged in an area where Germany and Austria are located today.

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  • Frühkapitalismus

    Early Capitalism

    Banking System and Founding of Dynasties

    Today we live in a capitalist society. The economy is based on free competition and private ownership of capital.

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  • Von der Antike zur Neuzeit

    From Antiquity to the Modern Era

    How Europe Has Become What It Is Today

    A lot of things we take for granted are actually the result of a long struggle. We live in a democracy and determine our government with elections.

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  • Mittelalterliche Städte

    Mediaeval Towns

    Buildings, Population, Organisation

    The mediaeval town was a fortified place where people lived who most of all engaged in commerce and trade.

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  • Germanen

    Germanic Tribes

    Beliefs, Everyday Life and Customs

    When the Romans deliberately encountered the Germanic tribes in the 2nd century BC, they knew almost nothing about their soon-to-be most dangerous enemies and even today, much is still obscure as the Germanic tribes, unlike the Romans, did not leave behind large stone edifices but built their houses from wood – and this is ephemeral.

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  • Ägypten

    Egypt

    Pharaohs and Pyramids

    Roughly from 3100 to 322 BC, one of the greatest and most powerful cultures of antiquity flourished in the Nile Valley.

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  • Rom

    Rome

    Traces of Ancient Heritage

    In its heyday, ancient Rome was the most imposing city of the known world and centre of one of the largest empires of all times but most of the more than one million residents viewed the metropolis as a foul juggernaut.

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  • Alexander

    Alexander

    Explorer and Conqueror

    Without doubt, after Alexander the Great, the world was not the same as before. During his reign of only elven years, he founded the largest world empire in the history of antiquity.

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  • Wikinger

    Vikings

    Seafarers, Traders, Warriors

    The Vikings – did not only raid monasteries mainly in England and Ireland, but pillaged and looted also along the coasts and rivers of Europe.

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  • Limes

    The Limes

    Boundary Wall of the Roman Empire

    The limes – the northern borderline of the Roman Empire stretched from Britannia to the Black Sea.

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  • Galileo Galilei

    Galileo Galilei

    Researcher and Explorer

    Galileo Galilei, ingenious inventor and researcher whose findings changed the whole world.

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  • Bronzezeit

    Bronze Age

    A New Material is Discovered

    With the use of bronze as a working material a new historical era started at about 2200 BC. Why was this particular metal so important for the development of humankind?

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  • Antikes Griechenland

    Ancient Greece

    Roots of Our Culture

    The age of antiquity ended over a thousand years ago, and yet, it surrounds us almost every day. The Greek temples have been imitated over and over, and they represent masterly achievements of architecture even today – grandeur and beauty formed by stone.

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  • Griechische Mythologie

    Greek Mythology

    Gods, Goddesses, Mythical Figures

    The search for the origin and meaning of our existence has always been an integral part of the history of mankind.

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  • Weimarer Republik

    The Weimar Republic

    The First Democracy in Germany

    In the heart of the federal state of Thuringia, there is the small town of Weimar, in which the cultural histories of Germany and Europe are blended together in a confined space.

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  • Neandertaler

    Neanderthal Man

    History of Mankind

    For 250,000 years the Neanderthal dominated Europe during the last glacial period until he died out about 30,000 years ago.

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  • Völkermord im Dritten Reich

    Genocide of the Third Reich

    Shoah

    Germany, 14th July 1933: Six months after Hitler’s so-called rise to power all parties were banned with the exception of the National Socialist German Labour Party. Now the total forcible coordination of political life in Germany was completed. The new political model was based on the Führer cult, an emotional relationship between the Führer and the masses.

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  • Europa

    Europe

    From Ancient Civilisations to the EU

    We Europeans belong to many different countries with diverse cultures, languages and beliefs. These differences, as also our similarities, are based on history.

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  • Römische Stadt

    Roman City

    From Military Camp to City

    Augsburg, Cologne, Trier – well-known and important German cities. They have one thing in common: all of them were founded by the Romans.

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  • Silicon Valley

    Silicon Valley

    Location for the IT and High-tech Industry

    The famous Golden Gate Bridge runs across the San Francisco Bay into one of the most beautiful cities of America. And into one of the world’s richest regions. Around the bay, the headquarters of the leading global corporations of the digital era are located. The cable cars lend an air of nostalgia to the city with its hilly and winding streets. In the bay, the state-of-the-art companies of the world are successful. Here, everything is about bits and bytes, the Internet and social media.

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  • Zug nach Auschwitz

    Train to Auschwitz

    Journey into the Past

    »They had better look out… one day our patience will be at an end and then these impudent and hypocritical Jews will be reduced to silence.«

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  • Männer hinter Hitler II

    Men behind Hitler II

    Himmler & Eichmann

    They wanted to rule the world. They possessed weapons of seduction and violence ... and 50 million people lost their lives. ... Millions of civilians ... millions of soldiers. In the end, however, they were defeated.

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  • Männer hinter Hitler I

    Men behind Hitler I

    Goering & Goebbels

    They wanted to rule the world. They possessed weapons of seduction and violence ... and 50 million people lost their lives. ... Millions of civilians ... millions of soldiers. In the end, however, they were defeated.

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  • Charles de Gaulle

    Charles de Gaulle

    The Last Great Statesman

    Charles André Marie Joseph de Gaulle was born on 22nd November 1890 to a patriotic, Catholic family in Lille. His father, Henri de Gaulle, a professor for literature and history, had a strong influence on him. Young Charles received a solid classical education from the Jesuits and Augustinians and decided upon a military career.

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  • Kulturwandel in Mexiko

    Cultural Change in Mexico

    The Zapatista Movement

    31 federal states and the capital district of Mexico City form the United Mexican States. With an overall area of almost two million square kilometres, Mexico is the fifth-largest country on the two American continents. Globally, Mexico ranks eleventh with a population of roughly 110 million people.

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  • Alexander von Humboldt

    Alexander von Humboldt

    His Work and Legacy up to Our Time

    The name of Alexander von Humboldt, who is considered the last polymath and is still admired as second discoverer in Latin America, is omnipresent. Schools, ships, mountains, rivers, squares are named after him; but above all animals and plants were given his name.

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  • John F. Kennedy

    John F. Kennedy

    Rise and Assassination

    John F. Kennedy married the 34-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier. Now they have two children, Caroline, 5, and John-John, 2. The presidential aircraft Air Force One is flying over Texas in the direction of Dallas Airport. The State of Texas is traditionally a conservative Republican stronghold.

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  • Sigmund Freud II

    Sigmund Freud II

    The Psychoanalyst

    At the beginning of the year 1900, Freud lived in a scientific isolation that he himself referred to as a kind of “splendid isolation” that allowed his ideas to develop without interference.

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  • Sigmund Freud I

    Sigmund Freud I

    Preanalytical Period

    On 6th May 1856 Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born in Freiberg, a small town in Moravia. His parents, the forty-one year old Jewish wool merchant Kallamon Jacob Freud and Amalia, née Nathansohn, who was 20 years his junior, had seven more children together, and his father had two sons from previous marriages.

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  • Absolutismus

    Rulers, States, Regimes

    European State Formation between 1560 and 1789

    About 150 years lie between the creation of these pictures: on the one hand, the absolute ruler of France Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to 1715 and on the other hand, George Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, two distinguished representatives of the French Revolution after 1789, who decided the fate of France.

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  • Generation 1968

    Generation of 1968

    Aims and Reality

    The protest movements of 1968 were ignited all over the world – the existing order underwent a dramatic upheaval. Students and pupils of the entire world – no matter in which country, which culture – expressed their solidarity.

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  • Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland

    Labour Movement in Germany

    1848 to 1914

    In 1815, after the end of the Napoleonic wars, Europe reinvented itself. The Congress of Vienna created new states and changed a great number of borders. After the devastating war years, now a deceptive peace was reigning and people could focus on normal life again.

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  • Völkerschlacht Leipzig

    Battle of the Nations

    War of Liberation against Napoleon

    From 16th to 19th October 1813 the allies Austria, Prussia, Russia and Sweden inflicted the decisive defeat on the French army, thus breaking the supremacy of Napoleon over Europe.

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  • Villa Rustica

    Villa Rustica

    Life in Former Times

    Roman villa is fundamentally different from what we would regard as a villa in the modern sense. A Villa Rustica was a country estate with a mansion, large gardens and agricultural land.

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  • Totenbuch

    The Egyptian Book of the Dead

    Ancient Egypt

    The notions described in the texts and pictures of the Book of the Dead are central to the ancient Egyptian belief in an afterlife – the belief in resurrection and life after death. In order to be granted passage to the “Realm of the Blessed”, the deceased first have to justify themselves before the Court of Death and give account that they have led their lives according to the laws of Maat – the order of the universe and justice.

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  • Holocaust-Mahnmal

    The Holocaust Memorial

    Stelae in Berlin

    The film “A German Memorial – How to Commemorate Six Million Murdered Jews” gives an insight into the two concepts of this memorial – each deeply impressive in its very own way. This thirty-minute documentary takes the viewer on a virtual tour of the Field of Stelae and the Information Centre.

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  • Wege zur Demokratie

    Ways to Democracy

    From the 19th Century to the Present

    This film shows the most important stages on the way to the development of democracy in Germany.

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  • Erinnern oder Vergessen?

    Remembrance or Oblivion

    Concentration Camp Mühldorfer Har

    The DVD provides an overview of the setting up of the concentration camps in the vicinity of Mühldorf on the Inn. Thousands of prisoners worked there from 1944 up to the end of World War II, building an arms bunker.

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  • Industrialisierung

    Industrialization

    Working Class Life in the Ruhr Valley

    This DVD treats the different working and living conditions of people in the Ruhr valley around the year 1900 and refers to the thesis of the sociologist Li Fischer-Eckert. She conducted interviews with working class women on their living conditions in the workers’ housing estates in 1911 and 1912.

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  • Die Grenze

    The Border

    An Inter-German Conflict Zone

    The DVD helps students, who have no first-hand recollection of the partition of Germany, to approach this problem. The film illustrates the historical development of the inner- German border from 1945 to 1989.

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  • Dschingis Khan

    Genghis Khan

    The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

    They appeared all of a sudden, as if from nowhere. Wild Mongol hordes on horseback overrun the Asian Steppes and Russian expanses at the beginning of the 13th century. Nobody can hold up their triumphal march.

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  • Steinzeit

    Stone Age

    Evolution of Mankind

    About 2,606,000 years ago, that is 52,120 generations before us, the first and at the same time longest period of human history began - the Stone Age. The film provides an overview of life during the Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. We get to know the various decades and the typical human ways of life resulting from them.

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  • Indianer

    American Indians

    Cultural Diversity in North America

    Who were the first people in America? The native inhabitants of this continent are called Indians, and they are just as diverse as the peoples in Europe. North America is divided into Nine Native American Culture Regions and the film goes into detail about the Indians of the north-eastern and south-eastern Woodlands, the Indians of the Southwest and the Plains Indians.

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  • Stadtentwicklung

    Urban Development

    Illustrated by the Example of Hann. Münden

    The film provides an insight into the topic of urban development. In such a process, many factors work together: for example geographic location, economic opportunities and citizens' prosperity.

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert I

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century I

    Communism under Mao

    Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-tung, founder of the People’s Republic of China, wanted to enter history as the “Great Helmsman“ who led his country into a new and better era by means of rigorous socialist transformations in economy, culture and society. But his rule was marked by terror, violence and despotism.

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  • Erster Weltkrieg

    First World War

    A European Catastrophe

    Double-DVD: First World War – A European Catastrophe Even though countless armed conflicts had shaken mankind in the course of its history, it was the First World War that surpassed with its 17 million casualties and immense damage anything that had ever been experienced before.

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert II

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century II

    Stalin

    Double-DVD: Nobody could trust his colleagues, his friends, even his own family any more. An entire nation was brutally oppressed, spied out and exposed to any conceivable form of despotism. Until Joseph Stalin died on 5th March 1953, these facts were the bitter reality of the Soviet citizens’ everyday life.

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert III

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century III

    Fidel Castro

    Today, the Caribbean island state of Cuba is an independent republic. Cuba was first ruled by the Spanish and later by the USA before the island gained its independence under Fidel Castro in the 20th century. He grew up in privileged conditions but already while studying law he engaged in political activity.

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert IV

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century IV

    Adolf Hitler

    Within just a few years, Adolf Hitler succeeds in transforming the young democracy of the Weimar Republic into a dictatorship. With sophisticated propaganda he got millions of German citizens to vote for him. He achieved dictatorship and started the 1st World War – driven by his anti-Semitic ideas and the vision of making Germany the ruler of the world. This film provides information on Hitler as a person.

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  • Zweiter Weltkrieg I

    Second World War I

    War of the Great Powers

    When, on 1st September 1939, the German Wehrmacht unleashed the Second World War with the attack on Poland, nobody could have visualised what immense suffering and gigantic destruction would descend on mankind during the following six years.

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  • Ernesto Che Guevara

    Ernesto Che Guevara

    Utopian and Revolutionary

    Che Guevara is the revolutionary fighter of the 20th century. His famous portrait can be seen everywhere on posters and T shirts. But who was Che Guevara? How did Ernesto Guevara de la Serna become the best-known revolutionist of contemporary history? Che is born in Rosario in Argentina as the son of a modern, educated couple. He attends high school and subsequently studies medicine.

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert V

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century V

    Benito Mussolini

    Benito Mussolini is born in1883 in the Romagna, a region of farmers and labourers, and grows up in an Italy where the economic crisis determines people’s lives. This leads to mass emigrations in the south and also in the better developed areas of the north, the situation escalates.

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  • Martin Luther King

    Martin Luther King

    “I didn’t want to just look on“

    Martin Luther King, born and raised in the household of a pastor, was one of the privileged blacks. He saw and experienced the injustice of social oppression and racism, which were particularly pronounced in the Southern States of the USA, and some of which are still lingering today. He called for demonstrations and civil disobedience and became the spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement of the USA: ”But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.“

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert VI

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century VI

    Francisco Franco

    Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde Salgado Pardo is born in El Ferrol (Galicia) on 4th December 1892.

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  • Georg Elser

    Georg Elser

    Alone against Hitler

    Who is this boy who almost killed Hitler later in his life?

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  • Apartheid

    Apartheid

    Racial Segregation in South Africa

    A new era began for South Africa when, in 1886, an out-of-work miner struck gold at the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The consequences of the discovery of the world’s largest natural treasure were dramatic.

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  • Große Katastrophen I

    Great Disasters I

    From Attack to Industrial Accident

    A disaster occurs when the balance inherent in a certain phenomenon is disturbed.

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  • Große Katastrophen II

    Great Disasters II

    From Concorde to Titanic

    A disaster occurs when the balance inherent in a particular phenomenon is disturbed.

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  • Diktaturen im 20. Jahrhundert VII

    Dictatorships in the 20th Century VII

    Nicolae Ceaușescu

    Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania for twenty-four long years and was a dictator. The General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party enjoyed, apart from the recognition of his own compatriots, great popularity in Western countries.

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