German History
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50 free German History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few countries have a past as crowded as Germany's. For most of a thousand years it was not one state at all but a patchwork of kingdoms, bishoprics and free cities under a loosely run empire. The nation that finally formed in the nineteenth century went on to be an empire, a fragile democracy, a dictatorship, two rival states and then a single republic again. This quiz walks through all of it. The questions cover the tribes who fought Rome, medieval emperors and popes, Luther and the wars of religion, the rise of Prussia, unification, both world wars, and the decades of division that ended when the Wall came down. Kings, chancellors, rebels and a few unexpected visitors all turn up along the way. It is pitched for curious general players as much as for history students. Most questions give a clue to reason from, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American TV star sang Looking for Freedom at the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve 1989?
David Hasselhoff
David Hasselhoff had spent eight weeks at number one in Germany with the song. He sang it two months after the Wall had come down.
Q 02Which crop did Prussia's Frederick the Great promote so keenly that Germans nicknamed him its king?
Potatoes
Potatoes earned Frederick the nickname Der Kartoffelkönig, the Potato King. He also brought in the turnip and dug canals to carry crops to market.
Q 03Germany's last emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was the eldest grandchild of which British monarch?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria had 42 grandchildren and Wilhelm was the first of them. His mother Vicky was her eldest child.
Q 04Napoleon took the Quadriga chariot statue to Paris from atop which Berlin landmark in 1806?
Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate got its quadriga back in 1814, after Napoleon's defeat and the Prussian occupation of Paris. He had been the first to march through the gate in triumph.
Q 05Which German landmark, begun in 1248, was finally completed 632 years later as the world's tallest building?
Cologne Cathedral
Cologne Cathedral sat unfinished for centuries after work halted around 1560. Once complete it held the height record for only four years, until the Washington Monument.
Q 06Which Russian empress was born a German princess, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, in the Prussian port of Stettin?
Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great married the heir to the Russian throne, the future Peter III, then overthrew him in a coup in 1762. Her birthplace is now Szczecin in Poland.
Q 07Which type of school did German educator Friedrich Fröbel found in 1837 and name three years later?
Kindergarten
Kindergarten was the word Fröbel coined in 1840 for the Play and Activity Institute he had opened at Bad Blankenburg. The term soon entered English as well.
Q 08Which French writer quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire?
Voltaire
Voltaire was mocking a realm that would last a millennium in all. Emperor Francis II formally dissolved it in 1806, after defeats by Napoleon.
Q 09In which room of Louis XIV's palace near Paris was the German Empire proclaimed in January 1871?
Hall of Mirrors
The Hall of Mirrors has a ceiling that celebrates the Sun King as a conqueror of German cities. Prussia's Wilhelm I was hailed as emperor beneath it.
Q 10At which Berlin Wall crossing point did American and Soviet tanks face each other in October 1961?
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie sat at the junction of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse. The stand-off came soon after the Wall went up that August.
Q 11Which Frankish king was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day 800?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne ruled from Aachen, his imperial capital, and was buried there in 814 in his own palace chapel.
Q 12Where did Germanic tribes under Arminius ambush and destroy three Roman legions led by Varus in AD 9?
Teutoburg Forest
The Teutoburg Forest ambush was an inside job: Arminius was himself an officer in the auxiliary troops serving under Varus.
Q 13In which Saxon university town did Martin Luther write his Ninety-five Theses against indulgences in 1517?
Wittenberg
Wittenberg was where Luther taught moral theology. Tradition has him nailing the theses to a church door, though he may never have posted them there at all.
Q 21In which city did the first freely elected parliament for all German states meet in a church in 1848?
Frankfurt
Frankfurt's Paulskirche housed the assembly from May 1848 to May 1849, and the constitution it drafted is still named after the church.
Q 22Which Prussian statesman, nicknamed the Iron Chancellor, built the first modern welfare state in the 1880s?
Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck created the welfare state to undermine his socialist opponents, not out of sympathy with them. It was meant to make ordinary Germans loyal to throne and empire.
Q 23At which 1870 battle did Prussian-led German armies capture the French emperor Napoleon III?
Sedan
Q 14Where did Martin Luther hide under the name Junker Jörg while translating the New Testament into German?
The Wartburg
The Wartburg sheltered Luther from May 1521 to March 1522, after he refused to recant at the Diet of Worms. He finished the translation in just ten weeks.
Q 15The Thirty Years' War began when Protestant nobles threw royal governors from a castle window in which city?
Prague
Prague's two governors and their secretary survived the 21-metre fall in 1618. Protestant pamphlets later claimed they had landed on a dung heap.
Q 16Which Rhine city was the hometown of Johannes Gutenberg, the printer of the 42-line Bible?
Mainz
Mainz founded the Gutenberg Museum in 1900 to mark 500 years since his birth. He completed his famous Bible there in 1455.
Q 17Which kingdom's ruler, Gustavus Adolphus, invaded northern Germany in 1630 to join the Thirty Years' War?
Sweden
Sweden's king looked set to become a major European leader, but he was killed two years later at the Battle of Lützen, fighting Wallenstein's imperial army.
Q 18Which medieval alliance of trading towns, growing from Lübeck, dominated commerce on the Baltic and North Seas?
Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League ultimately took in nearly 200 settlements across eight modern countries, reaching as far east as Estonia and Russia.
Q 19How did Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa die in 1190 while leading a German army on the Third Crusade?
Drowned in a river
He drowned in a river, the Saleph, near the castle of Seleucia. Most of his army then abandoned the crusade before it reached Acre.
Q 20Where in Italy did German king Henry IV wait three days in a blizzard to beg Pope Gregory VII's pardon?
Canossa
Canossa saw the king kneel outside the castle gate in a monk's hair-shirt, allegedly barefoot, in what has been called one of the most dramatic moments of the Middle Ages.
Sedan cost France its emperor and over a hundred thousand troops, all taken prisoner. Fighting still went on for months under a new French government.
Q 24Which rival power did Prussia defeat at Königgrätz in the Seven Weeks' War of 1866?
Austria
Austria met the Prussian armies in Bohemia on 3 July 1866. The conflict is also known as the German Civil War and the Brothers' War.
Q 25The Kulturkampf of the 1870s was a political struggle between Prussia's government and which body?
The Catholic Church
The Catholic Church in Germany, led by Pope Pius IX, was locked in the conflict for seven years, from 1871 to 1878. The name means cultural struggle.
Q 26Which modern African country was the colony of German South West Africa from 1884 until 1915?
Namibia
Namibia became independent under that name in 1990. Allied forces had captured the colony from Germany during the First World War.
Q 27Which philosopher, born in the Prussian city of Trier, co-wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848?
Karl Marx
Karl Marx was expelled from Germany after the revolutions of 1848 and moved to London, where he wrote Das Kapital.
Q 28Which dynasty ruled Prussia as kings from 1701 and held the German imperial crown from 1871 to 1918?
Hohenzollern
Hohenzollern rulers also sat on a throne far from Berlin: members of the family were kings of Romania.
Q 29To which neutral country did Kaiser Wilhelm II flee by train into exile in November 1918?
Netherlands
The Netherlands became his home for good: he bought a country house at Doorn, spent much of his time chopping wood there, and died in 1941.
Q 30In which Baltic naval port did German sailors mutiny in November 1918, setting off a revolution?
Kiel
Kiel's revolt followed trouble at Wilhelmshaven, where crews had refused orders to sail out for a final battle against the British Grand Fleet.