Medieval Europe
The following paragraphs are intended be informative pieces of information about a few of the countries that we will be visiting
Medieval Germany and Czechoslovakia
In Humanities class as Jesse Remington, we were just studying the middle ages in which the Holy Roman Empire was in power. The empire expanded from eastern France to western Russia, and from northern Italy to northern Germany. The chief territory of the Empire were the Germanic tribes and kingdoms that were loosely allied with each other through the empire. This is the area into which we are traveling for our Europe trip, so I believe it is important to have a better understanding of their history in order to understand their culture today.
In 1405, Czechoslovakia had a man dwelling there who was to be the first man to call for reform in the Roman Catholic Church. His name was John Huss, and he believed that neither did the pope have power to forgive sins nor the right to wage war. For his “insolence” he was burned at the stake. It would be barely more than one hundred years before anyone would follow in his footsteps, but the fate of empires were sealed by the burning of this one man.
In 1517, a monk turned theologian became in-dignified at the Pope for his over usage of indulgences, and exploitation of the mindless people of his age. He posted a paper on his local bulletin board and challenged debaters to come. Many of his ideas were based off of the ideas Huss had outspoken a hundred years before, but this time, the world would be completely transformed forever. His name was Martin Luther.
Modern Czech
When World War One was finally ending, Czechoslovakia declared it’s independence from the Austrian Empire. For the first time in centuries it was a nation on its own. Even as an independent state, it had incredible inherent problems to deal with. Most importantly was the fact that neither German or Slavs were given a large representation in the government. The Czechs took control and used the power for themselves. Then when World War Two began, Czechoslovakia was inducted into Hitler’s regime. Then upon Hitler’s fall, the Soviet Union of Russia took over. They were just as cruel as the Nazis had been, but they were not repelled until the fall of the USSR in 1989. Finally, after almost 100 years of conflict, in the year 1993 the country split into what is now the independent states of “The Czech Republic” ( the capitol, Prague, of which we will be visiting), and the “Republic of Slovakia”.