1918 (November) -- World War I ends.

1929 -- the Great Depression begins further impoverishing the less fortunate Germans. This puts great pressure on the ill-equipped Weimar democracy.

From Berlin the sickly Eduard brings his wife Lucie home to Schabbach. Lucie is an extremely ambitious woman and wants her husband to rise politically. She constantly henpecks poor Eduard to figure out a way to become more and more successful. Eduard's real love, however, is his photography. He is always taking pictures of all kinds of village events and village people. But Lucie pushes him to become a prominent local person in the Nazi Party.

1938 -- to escape the politically worsening situation in Germany, the famous German movie star Marlene Dietrich emigrates to the United States. A young Swedish girl named Zarah Leander with a lovely singing voice (whose grandparents were actually Jewish) becomes Dietrich's replacement. Many of the women in Schabbach simply adore seeing a Zarah Leander romantic musical. Maria, Paul's wife, and Pauline, Paul's sister, return from such a movie and have great fun as Pauline styles her hair in the Zarah Leander fashion.

1938 (June) -- German heavy-weight boxer Max Schmeling loses badly in a rematch with American boxer Joe Louis.

1943 -- the last large-scale German offensive assault on the eastern front begins at Kursk. The military situation really begins to deteriorate for the Germans in the Soviet Union.

1944 (June 6) -- the allied forces land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

1945 (May 8) -- Germany surrenders.

1955 -- West Germany joins NATO, while East Germany joins the Warsaw Pact.

1968 -- there are student demonstrations and unrest in West Germany as in the rest of the West.

1982-1998 -- reign of Helmut Kohl as Chancellor of Germany. He saw the destruction of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989) and the formal unification of West and East Germany (October 3, 1990).