Germany: Memories of a Nation

Neil MacGregor began his journey through 600 years of German history at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and ends it at the Reichstag, seat of the German Parliament. These two extraordinary buildings, only a few hundred yards apart, carry in their very stones the political history ...  Show more

Neil MacGregor focuses on Ernst Barlach's sculpture Hovering Angel, a unique war memorial, commissioned in 1926 to hang in the cathedral in Güstrow.Producer Paul Kobrak. 

After concentration camps like Buchenwald and extermination camps like Auschwitz, it seemed that the story of Jews in Germany must come to a full stop at the end of the war. Why would any Jew in 1945, or in 1965 for that matter, see any part of their future in Germany? But remark ...  Show more

Neil MacGregor talks to a Trümmerfrau, a woman who cleared rubble from the streets of Berlin in 1945, and focuses on a sculpture by Max Lachnit, a portrait of a Trümmerfrau made from hundreds of pieces of rubble.Neil also examines the role the launch of the Deutsch Mark played in ...  Show more

Neil MacGregor focuses on a small hand-cart to tell the story of the forced movement of more than 12 million Germans, who fled or were forced out of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945.For many, the only way of transporting their possessions was a hand-cart, as they walked to p ...  Show more