After the Napoleonic Wars, central Europe frequently witnessed important diplomatic discussions, and cities such as Vienna, Aix-la-Chapelle, Carlsbad, Troppau, and Laibach served as the places for rendezvous of European monarchs and diplomats. Austrian Chancellor Clemens Wenzel Lothar Nepomuk Prince von Metternich-Winneburg played a leading role at these meetings between 1814 and 1822, and he particularly wanted them to take place in the territories of the Austrian Empire because he could therefore better control their course and exert influence over the events to an extent undoubtedly exceeding the real power of the state whose interests he advocated. This is exactly what happened after 1814, and the subsequent years were definitely the happiest period in the life of the man known for his extraordinary diplomatic talent as well as his vanity. It was all the more difficult for him to reconcile himself with the loss of the position of the “coachman of Europe” in the 1820s when the alliance formed by the five European powers (Great Britain, France, Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and Russia) failed to solve the Greek war of independence. The July Revolution of 1830 then created a gulf between the liberal and conservative powers, so that neither the willingness of the five powers to cooperate under his leadership nor the necessary conditions for his leadership existed in the 1830s.

On November 27, 1918, Konrad Haenisch, the newly installed education minister (Kultusminister) and Majority Social Democrat, issued arguably the most radical decree in the history of Prussian schooling. The “Appeal to Male and Female Pupils in Secondary Schools,” as the edict was titled, aimed to redress the alleged rampant “demons of morbid subservience, mistrust, and lies” in secondary schools. Its proposed solution was for every school to hold an assembly by the end of the year to introduce democratic governance. Each teacher and each pupil in the ninth grade (Obertertia) and higher would have an equal vote on whether they wanted to form a school parliament (Schulgemeinde), a pupil council (Schülerrat), or both. In the school parliament, all teachers and pupils would have equal rights to have an “entirely open discussion” about their school affairs, including matters of discipline, and equal votes to pass resolutions pertaining thereto. In addition, pupils alone would elect a teacher and pupil council that would be standing liaisons to the director and the other teaching staff. Most controversially, the school parliament or the standing pupil council could appoint a representative empowered to bypass the school director and teaching staff and hold conversations with the ministers in Berlin about how to redress inequities in their particular school and change youth policy in the new republic more generally. A last measure in the decree gave pupils the unlimited right to join any association, provided it was “not political.” This new right abrogated the requirement that pupils in secondary schools get permission from their directors to found or join associations in or outside school. Haenisch required that schools post this decree on all blackboards. There were similar decrees issued in December 1918 in Saxony, Württemberg, and Bavaria.

Punctually at 4:05 on the morning of March 31, 1938, a new diesel locomotive left the Holzkirchen Bahnhof in Munich, pulling the first traveling “achievement exhibition” (Leistungsshau) of German technology. It had been nineteen days since the Anschluss, and on April 10 all Greater Germany would vote its approval of incorporating Austria into the Reich. Despite their use of terror to influence the Austrian vote and virtual assurance of electoral success, the National Socialists embarked on an extensive propaganda effort in Austria to ensure a wide margin of victory there. Hitler campaigned throughout Austria during the last ten days before the vote, making six major speeches, and other top Nazi officials made electioneering tours. Famous for constructing the Autobahn network, Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Highways, and the engineers of the NSDAP Central Office for Technology, organized a traveling propaganda exhibit to display German technology under the motto “Austria's chimneys will smoke again.” It was the first of three “Voyages of Technology” undertaken by Todt and his Nazi engineers.

According to a joke that made the rounds in the former Soviet Union, women from different countries held on to their husbands in different ways: the German by her skills as a housewife, the Spaniard by her passionate lovemaking, the Frenchwoman by her refined elegance—and the Russian by the party committee. This sexist quip was a not so oblique reference to the ways in which the communist party intervened in the private domestic affairs of its members. But—even leaving aside the obviously offensive—it was not entirely accurate, for the practice was just as common in other communist countries as well. This included the eastern half of postwar Germany, where, as in the Soviet Union, the wives of adulterous members of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) sometimes appealed to local functionaries for assistance with their straying husbands.

It is widely accepted that the inter-German border was constructed by East German authorities to halt the emigration to the west, which had damaged the East German economy and undermined the East German state agencies' power. This article argues that this is an inaccurate understanding, which mistakenly treats perceptions and insights gained from studying the Berlin Wall as representative of the mostly rural border between East and West Germany. It emphasizes crucial transformations of frontier society during the 1950s, highlighting the important role of western as well as eastern policy in shaping them.