Exam 1

Question 1

This is the name of Germany’s lower house of parliament, and it means Federal Assembly

Answer 1

Bundestag

Question 2

This is the name of the upper house of the German parliament, and its members are appointed by the sixteen states, or länder of the German federal union.

Answer 2

Bundesrat

Question 3

This battle was fought in 9 A.D., and it was won by an alliance of
German tribes that destroyed three Roman legions. This made the Rhine River a relatively permanent boundary between Rome and Germany, and thus, Germany and its western neighbors.

Answer 3

Battle of Teutoburg Forest

Question 4

This document, signed by Protestant leaders in Augsburg in
1630, laid out the major doctrines and religious tenets of the Lutheran Church.

Answer 4

Augsburg Confession

Question 5

Among Germanic tribes, this was a retinue of warriors who attached themselves to a tribal chieftain or subchieftain. In exchange for their service, the warriors received a share of the spoils in war and the protection and loyalty of the chieftain or subchieftain.

Answer 5

Comitatus

Question 6

This was a dynasty of Frankish kings that ruled from the 700s AD to the 800s AD. The Frankish kingdom reached its greatest extent under this dynasty, which included Charlemagne.

Answer 6

Carolingians

Question 7

This man was the greatest of the Frankish kings and a member of the Carolingian dynasty. The Frankish kingdom reached its largest extent under his leadership, and he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope on Christmas Day in the year 800 AD.

Answer 7

Charlemagne

Question 8

This was a law that was unique to German lands. it allowed the
sons of knights to inherit the smaller fiefs. This allowed knights to emerge as a distinct social class between the high nobility and the serfs

Answer 8

Constitutio de feudis

Question 9

During the High and Late Middle Ages in Germany, these were alliances made between different princes and nobles within the Holy Roman Empire. These alliances often warred against one another.

Answer 9

Circles

Question 10

This was a conference held after the Napoleonic Wars in the
city of Vienna. It was here that the German Confederation was created.

Answer 10

Congress of Vienna

Question 11

These were persons who were the inhabitants of the towns in medieval Germany; they tended to be craftsmen, merchants, bankers, and others engaged in commerce. This term is also used to denote the ruling class of German towns in the Middle Ages. In French, these people were called the bourgeoisie, while in England they were called the middle class.

Answer 11

Burghers

Question 12

This was a type of government that was common in Europe from roughly the early 1500s until the late 1700s. In this form of government, the king or monarch had the power to rule his kingdom without any kind of parliamentary body to restrain him or any kind of constitution to limit his power. Religious authorities, however, usually provided important restraints. Absolute monarchy assumed that political power comes from God.

Answer 12

Absolutism

Question 13

Also known as the Reichstag, this was an imperial assembly within the Holy Roman Empire attended by the emperor, nobles, bishops, and burghers that sought to discuss and make recommendations upon issues affecting the empire. It was not convened on a regular basis or in the same location. The various assemblies of the Diet are usually named after the city where they were held.

Answer 13

Diet

Question 14

This was the period in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when there was an unquestioned faith in science to solve mankind’s problems. There was also the development of liberal political ideas that would eventually lay the foundation for democracy in the Western world.

Answer 14

Enlightenment

Question 15

This was created by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. It had its origin in several earlier European economic organizations, and it has broken down many economic and political barriers between European nations.

Answer 15

European Union

Question 16

This man was the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He took
Silesia from the Austrian Empire from 1740 to 1745 and enjoyed many stunning victories during the Seven Years’ War from 1756 to 1763. He also secured Polish lands during the First Partition of Poland in 1772, and through all these accomplishments greatly expanded the land base of Prussia.

Answer 16

Frederick the Great

Question 17

This man was the greatest of the Hohenstaufen and kings and was called “Barbarossa” or Red Beard.

Answer 17

Frederick I

Question 18

This was created in the wake of the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars. It was essentially a secular reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire, and it was a loose confederation of German-speaking states.

Answer 18

German Confederation

Question 19

This was a document approved by the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in 1356. It formalized the election of the Holy Roman Emperor, which had in fact been happening on a less formal basis since 1257. This practice ensured that the elected emperors of the Holy Roman Empire would be weak, and that the Holy Roman Empire would become a loose association of relatively independent states until its dissolution in 1806.

Answer 19

Golden Bull

Question 20

This was a German nationalist idea that advocated a united
German nation state that included the German-speaking districts of present-day Austria.

Answer 20

Grossdeutschland

Question 21

This man was a German Enlightenment figure whose greatest
contribution was the development of calculus, which he developed independently of Isaac Newton.

Answer 21

Gottfried Leibniz

Question 22

This was a German nationalist idea prevalent in the nineteenth
century that advocated the union of all German states except Austria into a single political entity. This was essentially the plan that Otto von Bismarck adopted in 1871.

Answer 22

Kleindeutschland

Question 23

This area in western Germany is the country’s industrial heartland, primarily due to the large amounts of bituminous coal there.

Answer 23

Ruhr Valley

Question 24

During the Middle Ages this body was composed of the electors, nobles and bishops, and burghers of the towns within the Holy Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages and the period of the Reformation, it was usually referred to as the Diet. It became the principal parliamentary body of Germany from 1871 until the destruction of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Answer 24

Reichstag

Question 25

This was an inconclusive war fought by Lutheran princes who
formed the League of the Schmalkalden in order to preserve the gains of the Protestant Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V was able to defeat the league in this war from 1546 to 1547 but lost against the Lutheran princes in a new round of fighting in 1552. He was forced to recognize the Lutheran Church in the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.

Answer 25

Schmalkaldic War

Question 26

This man was a first century Roman chronicler and historian whose work Germania tells us a great deal about the semi-nomadic German tribes who lived to the northeast of the Roman frontiers.

Answer 26

Tacitus

Question 27

These were commoners during the Middle Ages, particularly the Early Middle Ages, who were attached for their entire lives to the service of a noble lord. They had to provide their lords with a certain amount of labor each year and could not leave their lord’s service without his permission.

Answer 27

Serfs

Question 28

This was a unique social class in German lands. These were men who were originally serfs who were given responsibility by a powerful lord such as managing 40 a manor. They eventually became a lower nobility roughly equal with knights, and many
held fiefs. Nevertheless, they were bound to the service of a single lord as a serf was and could not leave.

Answer 28

Ministeriales

Question 29

This was a long-running battle between the popes and the Holy
Roman emperors over the issue of appointing high church officials such as bishops in German lands. In the end, the popes were able to retain the power of appointment of 37 high church officials, and this allowed these church officials to amass a great deal of power at the expense of the Holy Roman emperors.

Answer 29

Investiture Contest

Question 30

This was a league of cities in northern Europe that was founded in 1271 and lasted until 1669. It stretched from France to Russia, and cities within the league did not tax or put tariffs on each other’s goods, which included furs, cloth, lumber, amber, etc. It was really the first international free trade zone.

Answer 30

Hanseatic League

Question 31

This is the name of the family that ruled over the province of
Brandenburg from 1417 onward and later in 1525 acquired the territory of Prussia.

Answer 31

Hohenzollern

Question 32

This was a treaty signed in 1555 at the conclusion of Charles V’s
war against the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League. By this treaty, both the Lutheran and Catholic Churches were recognized within the Holy Roman Empire.

Answer 32

Peace of Augsburg

Question 33

This was the 1648 treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War. It
extended recognition to Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.

Answer 33

Peace of Westphalia

Question 34

These were German theologians such as Philipp Jakob Spener who stressed a Christianity that focused upon personal relationship with God and Christ through knowledge of the scriptures. These theologians further “purified” Protestantism.

Answer 34

Pietist

Question 35

This man is considered the greatest of German writers who
wrote great works of literature and drama as well as works that covered topics as diverse as theology and science. His greatest literary works include Faust and Sorrows of Young Werther.

Answer 35

Johann von Goethe