Final Blog

This semester, in this class, we studied a broad section of topics. The first thing we had to do was learn the states and all about each one including population, square footage, and average income. Leaning about each state gave me a lot of insight to some of the parts of Germany. Germany isn’t a very large country and yet, each state seems to have its own system and different way of thinking. Certain states that were originally considered a different country gained their influences that way and other states vary because of their population or business potential. Even as short as thirty years ago, part of the country was governed by Russia.

The next thing we studied was about the political parties. The political system is very much like our own in many ways. There are two main parties, a party that is used for swing votes, and then your small parties with a small following whose views can get to be a little out there but connect with enough people in enough ways. My group studied the FDP. The FDP was the party that was used for swing votes. They never gained a whole lot of voter strength, hitting an all-time high of 14.6% of the national vote and hitting an all-time low (shortly after the high) at just under 5%. One thing I found interesting about the party system was that you didn’t have to be one of the two main parties like in the US system to gain high positions in the government i.e. the FDP having members hold the vice chancellors seat.

After that we read All Quiet on the Western Front. This was based during World War I and was set in the German camp following a particular set of high school friends and showed their plight. The book cased how pointless the war was. The characters talked about the uselessness because they would never see any gains of the war and that they had no quarrels against any of the opposing soldiers. The enemy soldiers were humans and just as frightened as they were and felt the same about there being no gains in war. We watched the movie after reading the book and, though it may have brought to life some of the things that you didn’t catch in the book, overall I wasn’t as impressed with the movie. As with any movie, certain parts of the book had to be left out and emphases on more questionable parts of the story are brought out.

Towards the end we got on a movie watching binge. All four of the movies were based on causing or going through change. Three of the four were on political or governmental change and the fourth was on personal change. In all four of the movies, the main characters were put through a struggle in their change making them question everything that they hold to be true. Most of them fought through the adversity and even though they knew that what they were doing may not have much influence on what they wanted, they still pushed on hoping for a better day to come.

Overall I learned that Germany isn’t far off from how we live here in the US; day to day struggles and issues are mostly the same. Women’s rights, the need and want for political change, finding good work at a young age, worker’s rights and unionizing are some of the problems faced with the everyday people of Germany. Where similarities do differ is in the past, Germany’s past is filled with a lot of war and struggle. Many much more difficult times and hardships were faced and through them, came a tough, steadfast people. In many ways, I believe that Germany’s people are better off than the people of the US. Here, when little things go poorly many people see them as such tragic instances in their lives when they really aren’t. I think that we could use more hardships in our lives so as to appreciate the things we do have going right for us more.