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The fortress Ordensburg Marienburg in Malbork, founded in 1274, the world's largest brick castle and the Teutonic Order's headquarters on the river Nogat.. The medieval German Ostsiedlung (literally Settling eastwards), also known as the German eastward expansion or East colonization refers to the expansion of German culture, language, states, and settlements to vast regions of Northeastern ...
Other regions were also settled, though not as heavily. The Ostsiedlung encompassed multiple modern and historical regions, primarily Germany east of the Saale and Elbe rivers, the states of Lower Austria and Styria in Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic, but also in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. [1] [2]
Throughout Eastern Europe, German-speaking populations were expelled to the reduced borders of Germany (or even Austria) in one of the largest ethnic cleansing operations in history. [97] Regions where Germans had formed the local population majority were re-settled with Polish- or Czech-speakers.
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD 500), the Middle Ages (AD 500–1500), and the modern era (since AD 1500). The first early European modern humans appear in the fossil record about 48,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic era.
The concept of Germany as a distinct region in Central Europe can be traced to Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul. The victory of the Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ( AD 9) prevented annexation by the Roman Empire , although the Roman ...
von Treitschke, Heinrich, History of Germany – vol.1: The Wars of Emancipation, (translated by E & C Paul), Allen & Unwin, London, 1915. Powell, E. Alexander, Embattled Borders, London, 1928. Prausser, Steffen and Rees, Arfon: The Expulsion of the "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War.
Geopolitically, the establishment of German Lebensraum in the east of Europe would thwart blockades, like those that occurred during the First World War, which starved the people of Germany. [97] Moreover, using Eastern Europe to feed Germany also was intended to exterminate millions of Slavs, by slave labour and starvation. [98]
In present-day Germany, the former eastern territories of Germany (German: ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany, i.e. the Oder–Neisse line, which historically had been considered German and which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after World War II.