With the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht, the 2nd World War in Europe sparked by the German Reich and the National Socialists and the twelve-year Nazi rule ended on May 8, 1945. Over 60 states on earth were directly or indirectly involved in the world war.

The two U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, led to Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945, and thus to the end of the war. The only use of nuclear weapons in a war to date resulted in the deaths of around 100,000 civilians and forced laborers abducted by the Japanese army. By the end of 1945 alone, a further 130,000 people had died from consequential damage, and many more were to follow.

The war in French-Indochina took place between France and the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Việt Minh) between 1946 and 1954. The French side sought to re-establish its political rule in the colony. The Viet Minh pursued the goal of an independent and communist Vietnam. At the 1954 Indochina Conference in Geneva, France agreed to a negotiated settlement that led to the independence of Laos and Cambodia and the partition of Vietnam. This partition eventually led to the Vietnam War. The Indochina War, also known as the French Indochina War, was part of a series of military conflicts that took place in the countries of Indochina from 1941 to 1979.

The artist group CoBrA was founded on November 8, 1948 in a café in Paris and existed until 1951. The name comes from the first letters of the cities Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. In addition to the initiators Asger Jorn and Constant, the group included Christian Dotremont, Karel Appel, Carl-Henning Pedersen and Corneille, Pierre Alechinsky, Karl Otto Götz, Jan Nieuwenhuys and Lucebert. The similarity in name to the poisonous snake cobra was meant to illustrate the progressiveness with which the artists worked against academic and bourgeois norms. Their images were meant to convey a rejection of notions of traditional aesthetics. The group also saw itself as a political association and published ten issues of the magazine CoBrA.

1950 saw the birth of the so-called Schuman Plan, when French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community in a speech on May 9, 1950.

On April 18, 1951, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg signed the Coal and Steel Community Treaty, which eventually led to the creation of the European Union.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, overturned its previous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring racial segregation practiced in individual state and government district schools unconstitutional.

The Vietnam War from 1955 to 1975 was triggered in the broadest sense by Vietnam's independence from the former colonial power France in 1954 and the division of Vietnam into a northern and a southern part. The warring parties were the communist-oriented North Vietnam with the National Liberation Front, also known as the Vietcong, and South Vietnam with the United States, which entered the war in 1965. The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, ended with the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam and the reunification of Vietnam.

The first documenta, which took place in Kassel from July 15 to September 18, 1955, is considered the first large and comprehensive exhibition of modern art in West Germany after the end of World War II. On display were mainly works by artists who had been branded as degenerate during the National Socialist era in Germany.

The work Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? by Richard Hamilton from 1956 is considered the first work of Pop Art that contained all the typical features of Pop Art characteristics. The collage was used in 1956 as the motif for the poster for the exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. The most important representatives of English Pop Art were Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Peter Phillips and Pauline Boty.

Lugano, Italy, hosted the first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest on May 24 under the title Gran Premio Eurovisione della Canzone Europea.

The public downplaying of nuclear weapons at the highest political level caused consternation. Within a week, West German nuclear physicists - including Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - formulated a statement that went down in history as the Göttinger Appell of April 12, 1957.

"For a small country like the Federal Republic, we believe that it still protects itself best today and is most likely to promote world peace if it expressly and voluntarily renounces the possession of nuclear weapons of any kind. In any case, none of the undersigned would be willing to participate in the production, testing, or use of nuclear weapons in any way." (Göttinger Appell, April 12, 1957)

On February 19, black jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong was the victim of an explosive attack by segregation advocates in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.

With the signing of the Treaties of Rome by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Economic Community was founded on March 25, 1957, with the aim of promoting a common economic policy within the framework of European integration.

Due to a great famine, up to 45 million people died in China between 1958 and 1961. Agricultural productivity was easily disrupted by the large population in China. It was vulnerable to climatic events, natural disasters, population changes, and military conflicts. During this period, agriculture was significantly affected by Mao's Great Leap Forward campaign. Mao's call for the population to produce steel ultimately led to the Great Famine.

Daniel Spoerri and Karl Gerstner realized three editions of Edition MAT from 1959 to 1965 together with Hein Stünke/Galerie Der Spiegel. Their idea of reproducing originals in the form of Edition MAT, which Karl Gerstner also called Originals in Series, established the emergence of the art form Multiple.

In September 1959, the Xerox company introduced the Xerox 914 as a fully automatic copier for plain paper. With a volume of 100,000 copies per month, Xerox 914 was the first commercially successful copying machine.

The English rock band The Beatles formed in Liverpool in 1960 and consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. As the most influential band of all time, they contributed significantly to the development of the 1960s counterculture and the recognition of pop music as an art form. The band broke up in 1970.

The year 1960 is also known as the African Year, because 18 African colonies were able to gain independence from their colonial powers: Cameroon, Togo, Madagascar, the Republic of Congo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Chad, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Mauritania, and British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland, which united to form present-day Somalia.

On August 18, 1960, Enovid became the first birth control pill to be launched in the United States. Berlin-based Schering AG launched its first birth control pill, Anovlar, first in Australia on January 1, 1961, and then in Germany on June 1, 1961. The birth control pill was so revolutionary after its market launch and so little accepted socially and politically that it was prescribed only to married women until the early 1970s.

The first manifesto of New Realism, Les Nouveaux Réalistes, was published in April 1960 in the catalog of a group exhibition of French and Swiss artists at the Apollinaire Gallery in Milan. Yves Klein and Pierre Restany, Armand Fernandez, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé then signed their manifesto La Déclaration constitutive du Nouveau Realisme in the sense of a constitutive declaration of New Realism on October 27, 1960 in Yves Klein's apartment. It states, "The 'Nouveaux Réalistes' have become aware of their collective uniqueness. Nouveau Réalisme = new approach of the perceptive faculty to the real." Nine copies of the manifesto (seven on blue paper, one each on pink and on gold paper) were signed.

On August 13, 1961, border police began building the Berlin Wall. For 28 years, it cemented the division of Germany as an internationally known symbol. Until its fall in 1989, at least 136 people died trying to escape at the Berlin Wall.

Early in the morning of August 13, 1961, armed border police began tearing up the pavement in Berlin. They piled up pieces of asphalt and cobblestones to form barricades, pulled barbed wire entanglements, rammed in concrete posts - supervised by units of the National People's Army. That night, Walter Ulbricht, SED party leader and chairman of the GDR Council of State, had given the order to seal off the sector border in Berlin - in agreement with the Soviet Union.

On the same day, East German news broadcasts propagandistically announced that the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) had separated the areas of Germany and sectors of Berlin occupied by the Western Allies with a so-called anti-fascist protective wall. After a few days, West Berliners were completely denied access to the eastern part of the city - Berlin was divided into two halves: Until November 9, 1989, a four-meter-high wall separated one million East Berliners from the then 2.3 million inhabitants of West Berlin.

The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 lasted 13 days and was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that arose as part of the nuclear arms race. U.S. reconnaissance flights revealed the existence of 16 to 32 Soviet nuclear missiles with a range of up to 4,500 kilometers in Cuba, whereupon some 200 U.S. warships took up positions around Cuba. Both sides sought to de-escalate. Soviet head of state Nikita Khrushchev let U.S. President John F. Kennedy know that he would immediately withdraw the missiles from Cuba provided the U.S., for its part, agreed to withdraw its missiles from Turkey and refrain from invading Cuba, which was subsequently implemented. Both powers came closest to direct military confrontation, and thus possible nuclear war, during this crisis.

The 14 concerts of the Fluxus International Festival of New Music took place over four weekends in September 1962 at the Museum Wiesbaden. They marked the beginning of the Fluxus movement. It is mainly due to the US military bases in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden-Erbenheim that the initial spark of FLUXUS as a historical moment in recent art history took place in Wiesbaden's Municipal Museum.

Since 1963, when the first portable cassette recorder, the Philips EL 3302, came onto the market, it has left its mark on entire generations: from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, the audio or music cassette played a major role for many artists internationally in the production and dissemination of their sound art.

On November 22, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy dies in an assassination attempt in Dallas during a campaign trip. The 35th President of the United States becomes a myth through his death.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968), a U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights activist, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his commitment to social justice. He spread civil disobedience as a means of opposing the political practice of racial segregation in the United States. He was one of the most prominent figures in the nonviolent struggle against oppression and social injustice. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, he was the best-known spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement of the African American civil rights movement in the United States.

Something Else Press was founded in 1964 by U.S. artist Dick Higgings. The avant-garde publisher of artists' books was originally based in Chelsea (Manhattan), New York, until 1974. In its ten-year existence, the publisher published just over 60 works and 20 booklets in the Great Bear Pamphlet series, as well as cards, posters, and newsletters.

The Civil Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, is the most significant U.S. federal law providing equality for ethnic minorities. The law prohibited any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations, government, and employment.

In 1965, herman de vries began publishing the magazine revue integration. In 1974, he founded the artists' publishing house eschenau summer press publications.

Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in May 1966 to transform the agrarian state into an industrial society. The establishment of communism brought China ten years of terror of class struggle, which cost the lives of millions of citizens. The rule of law and order were completely suspended. The murder of scholars and their entire families was politically encouraged. The cultural elites were mercilessly persecuted, denounced and stripped of their dignity in public. As a result, officials, intellectuals and artists were persecuted, tortured and killed by the hundreds of thousands, monuments, temples, libraries were destroyed and traditional relics such as scrolls, art and cultural objects were destroyed. Ancient knowledge was razed to the ground without any consideration. All this as an expression of loyalty to the party.

The world's first successful curative human heart transplant took place on December 3, 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria lasted from June 5 to June 10, 1967. As an aspect of the Middle East conflict, it was the third Arab-Israeli war after the Israeli War of Independence (1948) and the Suez Crisis (1956).

Immediate triggers of the war were the Egyptian closure of the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping on May 22, the withdrawal of UNEF troops from the Sinai forced by Egyptian President Nasser, and an Egyptian deployment of 1,000 tanks and nearly 100,000 troops to Israel's borders.

The war began June 5 with a preemptive strike by Israeli air forces against Egyptian air bases, intended to preempt a feared attack by Arab states. Jordan, which had signed a defense pact with Egypt on May 30, 1967, then attacked West Jerusalem, Ramat Rachel, and Netanya. During the course of the war, Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The outcome of the war continues to influence the geopolitics of the region to this day.

Although Alexander Dubček continued to believe that socialism was the best form of society, he wanted to reform the socialist model of Czechoslovakia. His vision of socialism with a human face took concrete form in the KSČ Action Program of April 1968. After pre-censorship was abolished, other basic civil rights were to be guaranteed. These included freedom of speech and assembly as well as freedom of science, art, culture and the media. Many banned parties and associations were allowed to resume their work. The other member states of the Warsaw Pact viewed the reform efforts in Czechoslovakia with suspicion.

On the night of August 20-21, 1968, Warsaw Pact troops marched into Czechoslovakia. The KSČ party leadership was arrested on the night of the invasion and taken to Moscow.

The operation was justified afterwards with the Brezhnev Doctrine proclaimed in November 1968. This doctrine restricted the national sovereignty of the socialist states. The Soviet Union had to decide which developments in a state were acceptable and which threatened socialism. However, the occupiers failed to install a new state leadership because reformers were in the majority in Czechoslovakia's Politburo.

Instead, they got the KSČ leadership to sign the Moscow Protocol. In it, important points of the reform, including freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, were reversed.

Martin Luther King's commitment and effectiveness played a major role in turning the Civil Rights Movement into a mass movement. This ultimately achieved the legal abolition of racial segregation and the introduction of unrestricted voting rights for the black population of the U.S. southern states. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was shot and killed in an assassination attempt in Memphis.

May 1968 was the temporal center of the '68 movement in France. In addition to improvements in study conditions, political demands were made concerning unemployment, consumer society, the peace movement (especially against the Vietnam War, the Prague Spring, International Solidarity) and the democratization of society.

The unrest, initially sparked by the eviction of a faculty at the Sorbonne University in Paris following student protests in May 1968, led to a general strike that lasted for weeks and paralyzed the entire country. In the long run, this revolt drew cultural, political and economic reforms in France.

As early as 1969, Peter van Beveren founded the Art Information Centre in Middleburg and was one of the first in the Netherlands to collect reproduced and published works of art.

The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was a computer network that was the forerunner of today's Internet. The first data transmission took place on October 29, 1969, between computers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute near San Francisco.

On July 21, 1969, at 3:56 a.m. CET, the first humans set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Five more manned moon landings of the Apollo program took place in the following three years. This event was filmed both by Aldrin from the window of the lunar module and by a television camera at the foot of the lander. Some 600 million television viewers on Earth experienced the live broadcast.

Christopher Street Day is a day of celebration, commemoration and demonstration of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender persons and intersexuals. On this day, demonstrations are held for the rights of these groups and against discrimination and exclusion. The largest parades on the occasion of the CSD in German-speaking countries take place in Berlin and Cologne.

The CSD commemorates the first known uprising of homosexuals and other sexual minorities against police arbitrariness on New York's Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood: in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the so-called Stonewall Uprising took place at the Stonewall Inn bar. At that time, there were repeated violent police raids on bars targeting trans and homosexuals. Particularly affected by abuse and arbitrariness were Afro-Americans and those of Latin American origin.

When drag queens and transsexual Latinas and Blacks in particular resisted the recurring controls that night, it set the stage for days of street battles with the New York Police Department. To commemorate the first anniversary of the riot, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee was formed. Since then, New York has commemorated the event with a street parade on the last Saturday of June, Christopher Street Liberation Day. This has become an international tradition of holding a demonstration in the summer for the rights of gays and lesbians. The first CSD took place in New York on November 7, 1970.

Artpool was founded from the legacy of György Galántai's Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár.

György Galántai rented a small wedding chapel in Balatonboglár from the Catholic Church in 1968, which he used as a studio and for small exhibitions. In 1970 the first exhibition with a selection of his graphic works took place in the so-called chapel studio. The following group exhibition initiated an extensive avant-garde art and cultural program. Numerous international artists also participated in the exhibitions, including Anette Messager, Timm Ulrichs, Jochen Gerz, Clemente Padin, Chieko Shiomi. Galántai documented all activities and also the repressions by the police. These records and the collection of all documentary materials later became the basis of the Artpool Archive. The chapel studio offered a forum to all those artists to whom the official exhibition venues were closed. With their participation, artists and visitors sent a political signal, to which the police reacted with identity checks and disruptive actions, including vandalism. In August 1973, the studio was closed after a police operation. György Galántai was blacklisted by the Communist Party.

The Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, was founded in 1970 as a communist, anti-imperialist urban guerrilla. It saw armed struggle as the highest form of class struggle. The German terrorist group disbanded in 1998.

On October 14, 1971, Greenpeace was founded in Canada as an offshoot of the Don't Make a Wave Committee.

The Munich Olympic assassination on September 5, 1972 was an attack by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games. The terrorist act began in the early morning with the raid on the Israeli living quarters in the Olympic village, during which two athletes were murdered and nine others were taken hostage. After inconclusive negotiations, it ended on the night of September 6 with an unsuccessful rescue attempt at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield. All nine Israeli hostages, one police officer and five of the eight hostage-takers were killed.

The crime was never dealt with legally, as the three surviving terrorists were released from German custody just a few weeks after the crime by hijacking Lufthansa Flight 615. In immediate response to the failure of the Bavarian police, the German anti-terrorist unit GSG 9 was formed.

As a humanitarian gesture, Germany paid some 4.6 million euros to the families of the murdered Israelis in 1972 and 2002. In 2022, the Federal Republic officially acknowledged its responsibility for the inadequate protection of the athletes and the poorly planned liberation operation and awarded the surviving relatives a compensation sum of 28 million euros.

Released by Atari on November 29, 1972, Pong became the first video game to be popular worldwide. It is considered the forefather of video games, although video games had been developed before. The game principle of Pong is similar to that of table tennis: a dot (ball) moves back and forth on the screen. Each of the two players controls a vertical line (racket), which he can move up and down with a rotary knob. If you let the ball pass the racket, your opponent gets a point.

Art Metropole is a nonprofit visual arts center focused on contemporary art in formats suitable for dissemination and distribution: artist books and art publications, video, audio, electronic media, and multiples. Art Metropole distributes its work at its space at 896 College Street, at pop-up and satellite locations, and online.

Art Metropole produces exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, performances, and manages a public art collection and archive related to the practice.

The center was founded in 1974 by the artist collective General Idea as a division of Art-Official Inc (1972). Art-Official's mission is to promote and document collaboration and the exchange of ideas among artists. The company served as a non-profit business unit for General Idea's File Megazine (1972-1989). Art Metropole was conceived as an artist-run center and collection office dedicated to the documentation, archiving, and dissemination of all images.

The Archive for Small Press & Communication (ASPC) was founded in 1974 by Anne Marsily and Guy Schraenen in Antwerp, Belgium. The art archive for all forms of artists' publications collects works from all areas of contemporary art and has been documenting works created independently of the official art scene on artists' own initiative since 1999.

Represented are all important artistic directions since the 1960s, such as Conceptual Art, Fluxus, Land Art, Minimal Art, Pop Art or Concrete Poetry. Since 1974, the ASPC has continuously issued publications, produced radio programs, and organized exhibitions, lectures, and symposia.

The Watergate affair is defined by the United States Congress as a series of serious abuses of government powers that occurred during the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon. The revelation of these abuses massively exacerbated a crisis of societal confidence in Washington politicians in the United States that had been triggered by the Vietnam War, and ultimately led to a serious constitutional crisis. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned from office - the only U.S. president in U.S. history to do so - thus forestalling the threat of impeachment.

herman de vries founds the artists' publishing house eschenau summer press publications. In 2023, a new publication by Nan Groot Antink appears there.

Other Books and So was a pioneering artist-run bookstore and gallery founded by Ulises Carrión in Amsterdam in 1975-1979. Other Books and So was the first bookstore to focus specifically on artists' publications: visitors to the store could browse a selection of artists' books, magazines, postcards, sound works, and multiples produced by experimental artists and writers from around the world. In its four years of existence, Other Books and So hosted over 50 exhibitions, including solo shows by Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Dorothy Iannone, and Jiri Valoch, as well as group shows on artists' books, mail art, sound poetry, and related practices.

Paul Allen and Bill Gates founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Microsoft Corporation became the world's largest software manufacturer and one of the largest companies ever.

In Spain, an era comes to an end with the death of dictator Francisco Franco and the reintroduction of the monarchy.

Steve Jobbs and Steven Wozniak found Apple and produce the Apple I, prototype of the PC (at that time still with wooden housing) in the same year with a run of 200 units.

Founded in 1976, Printed Matter, Inc. is the world's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to the dissemination, understanding, and appreciation of artists' books and related publications.

Printed Matter was initially founded in Tribeca by a group of arts professionals in response to a growing interest in artists' publications. Beginning in the early 1960s, many of the pioneering conceptual artists began to explore the possibilities of the book form as an artistic medium. Large circulation and inexpensively produced publications allowed for experimentation with artworks that were affordable and could circulate outside of the mainstream gallery system. Printed Matter provided a space in which artists' books were promoted as complex and meaningful works of art, helping to bring greater visibility to a medium that was not widely available at the time.

In Czechoslovakia, a citizens' initiative was formed in 1977 with Charter 77, whose founding members included future President Václav Havel. Until the end of the socialist regime, the Charter published hundreds of writings on human rights violations and other issues. The state reacted with interrogations and, in some cases, years of pre-trial detention against the activists.

Aart van Barneveld founded the Stempelplaats gallery in Amsterdam in 1977, which organized stamping workshops and showed only works created with the help of stamps in the exhibitions. The company Stempelplaats provided a room free of charge and financed the events.

The year 1977 was marked by RAF terror, especially in Germany. This reached its climax with the hijacking of the Lufthansa aircraft Landshut and the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer.

From 1978 to 2003, the Bielefeld Colloquium New Poetry was an annual meeting of international poets and artists, especially from the field of concrete and visual poetry. The highlight of the meeting, which lasted several days, was a reading by the authors on the last day.

On March 8, 1979, the Dutch Philips Group presented the first audio CD and CD player prototypes to a professional audience. The Japanese Sony and Dutch Philips Groups then launch the CD (compact disc) in joint development.

Artpool Art Research Center is an archive of avant-garde and contemporary art founded in Budapest in 1979 by György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay. Artpool's mission is to document, archive, research, share, and present local and international art practices related to conceptual art, Fluxus, and experimental trends and media.

Green parties are founded all over Europe as part of the environmental movement, such as Die Grünen in Germany. The history of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen has two distinct roots: In West Germany and West Berlin, the Green Party sprang from the environmental movement and the new social movements of the 1970s, and was founded as a party in Karlsruhe on January 13, 1980. In the GDR, the groups of the civil rights movement that had been instrumental in the peaceful revolution of 1989 joined together in 1990 to form Bündnis 90. Die Grünen and Bündnis 90 united in 1993 to form the joint party Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. The Green Party in the GDR, which along with the Green League represented the East German ecology movement, had already merged with the West German Greens to form an all-German party on December 3, 1990. In Switzerland and Austria, comparable parties formed in 1982 and 1983.

Solidarność is the name of a Polish trade union that emerged from a strike movement in 1980 and played a decisive role in the revolution and reform of 1989. It represents the most successful independent free trade union in the former Eastern Bloc. The great strike wave of 1980 was triggered by price increases for meat on July 1, 1980. Local strikes soon spread to the entire country. From the beginning, the labor movement was supported by regime-critical intellectuals such as Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Bronisław Geremek, Jacek Kuroń, Adam Michnik, Józef Tischner and large sections of the Catholic Church, especially by Pope John Paul II. This succeeded in creating solidarity across social boundaries, which then turned against the ruling regime in a popular movement. There was great support, especially from other Western countries (particularly the United States and West Germany).

With the proclamation of martial law in Poland on the night of December 13, 1981, the union's leading figures were interned and the work of the union itself was banned. Thus, it could only continue to exist underground. On October 8, 1982, Solidarność was finally banned by a new trade union law.

Solidarność exile groups were formed abroad, which were active in trade union politics through the establishment of offices. The foreign activities were coordinated by the Brussels office of Solidarność. A coordinating function in Germany was carried out by the Bremen coordination office of Solidarność.

On February 28, 1981, the large demonstration at Brokdorf took place in the Wilstermarsch region near Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein. The gathering, organized by citizens' initiatives from the anti-nuclear movement, was directed against the construction of the Brokdorf nuclear power plant. Despite a court-confirmed ban on assembly, some 50,000 to 100,000 demonstrators took part in the largest demonstration against the use of nuclear energy in the Federal Republic up to that time. The vast majority of the demonstrators behaved peacefully, while about 3,000 militants caused riots. In 1985, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the 1981 ban on assemblies inadmissible in the Brokdorf decision.

On August 12, 1981, IBM launched its first personal computer in the USA. The plain gray box, a keyboard and 16 kilobytes of free memory cost over 1500 USD, the monitor cost extra.

AIDS refers to a specific combination of symptoms that occur in humans as a result of the destruction of the immune system triggered by HIV infection. Sufferers develop life-threatening opportunistic infections and tumors.

AIDS was recognized as a distinct disease by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on December 1, 1981, after defining the coincidence of certain disease signs as AIDS. AIDS is one of the sexually transmitted diseases. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, there were approximately 37.9 million HIV-positive people living worldwide in 2019. In 2019, about 1.7 million new HIV infections occurred (4650 per day), and about 0.77 million people died as a result of HIV/AIDS. Since the beginning of the epidemic, 35 million people have died from AIDS. The global average proportion of HIV-infected people is about 0.8% of 15-49 year-olds, but in some African countries it has reached levels of around 25%. There is no vaccination available. Due to the more effective treatment of HIV-infected persons with new drugs, AIDS has become rarer in Central Europe.

The U.S. news magazine Time chose the computer as machine of the year on December 27.

Udo Lindenberg is allowed to perform at a rock concert in Berlin's Palast der Republik. His hit Sonderzug nach Pankow (Special Train to Pankow), in which the singer ironically appeals to head of state Erich Honecker, triggered what would later turn out to be his only appearance in the GDR.

Company Apple introduces the Apple Macintosh.

The first e-mail reaches Germany.

IBM introduces the IBM Personal Computer/AT. Its technology is standard in this market segment as AT format for more than a decade.

Boekie Woekie - Books by Artists - was founded on January 1, 1986 in a tiny room in the center of Amsterdam. At that time the 6 founders (artists from 3 countries living in Amsterdam) saw it as a store for their own publications. After the first five years and some restructuring in the group, and after three of the founders had left the publishing house, Boekie Woekie started its second phase in a much bigger store and with a new concept that resulted from the experience gained: the new store was opened for publications of others. In the meantime, there are about 7000 titles - almost exclusively self-published or small. The operators - Henriëtte van Egten (Dutch), Rúna Thorkelsdóttir (Icelandic) and Jan Voss (German) - have continued their personal careers as artists and have for years regarded the store itself as a sculpture in progress on which they work together. A small gallery space has been part of Boekie Woekie from the beginning. Publishing books on a very small scale (3 or 4 titles a year) has never stopped, leading to annual participation in one or two book fairs (Frankfurt, London, New York). The entirely self-financed company is Europe's, if not the world's, longest-running venue for artists' books, carrying books regardless of the fame of the authors.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred at 01:23 on April 26, 1986, in reactor unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near the Ukrainian town of Prypyat, founded in 1970. On the seven-level international nuclear event rating scale, it was the first event to be classified in the highest category of catastrophic accident (INES 7).

The weekly radio program of the ORF culture channel Österreich 1 went on air for the first time on December 3, 1987. It was founded by curator, critic and journalist Heidi Grundmann. The majority of the radio art works broadcast are produced especially for Kunstradio.

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall around West Berlin, a symbol of the division of Germany, fell. Border guards, barbed wire, mines and self-propelled grenades made this border fortification almost insurmountable. On the night of November 10, thousands of West and East Berliners crossed the border, some dancing on the wall.

German reunification, triggered by the peaceful revolution in the GDR in 1989 and 1990, took place on October 3, 1990, when the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany.

On February 2, 1990, South Africa's President de Klerk surprised South Africa and the world: in his speech to Parliament, he announced that he would lift the ban on the African National Congress', the Pan Africanist Congress', the Communist Party of South Africa and a host of other organizations fighting apartheid, release all political prisoners and end apartheid. Nine days later, Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison.

Twenty-five years ago, South Africa's then President Frederik Willem de Klerk heralded the final end of apartheid. For decades, the black population in South Africa had been discriminated against and persecuted. Especially since the National Party came to power in 1948, a policy of so-called racial segregation had prevailed, depriving the black population of its basic and human rights and brutally suppressing them. In his first speech of 1991 to the white-dominated parliament in Cape Town, de Klerk promised to abolish the last remaining laws of so-called racial segregation.

On 17.5.1991, the World Wide Web (WWW) is officially released on the computers of the CERN computer center in Geneva.

In 1991, world events were dominated in particular by the Second Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the final dissolution of the Soviet Union. After the August coup in Moscow, numerous Union republics declared their independence. Since then, there have been numerous post-Soviet states; the largest of these is Russia.

The Maastricht Treaty, signed on 7.2.1992, laid down the rules for the future common currency of the EU as well as for foreign and security policy and closer cooperation in the fields of justice and home affairs. This treaty, which entered into force on 1.11.1993, established the European Union.

The Rwandan genocide refers to extensive acts of violence in Rwanda that began on April 7, 1994 and continued until mid-July 1994. Approximately 800,000 to 1,000,000 people lost their lives. In nearly 100 days, members of the Hutu majority killed approximately 75 percent of the Tutsi minority living in Rwanda, as well as Hutu who did not participate in the genocide or actively opposed it. The genocide occurred in the context of a long-running conflict between the Rwandan government at the time and the rebel movement Rwandan Patriotic Front.

The Wrapped Reichstag was an art project by the artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude. As part of the project, whose realization lasted from 1971 to 1995, the Reichstag building in Berlin was completely wrapped with aluminum-vaporized polypropylene fabric from June 24 to July 7, 1995. The Reichstag wrapping represents one of the most famous works of art in public space.

Northern Ireland regains its autonomy after 27 years of British rule.

Marriage for all or opening up marriage - as the introduction of a right to marry for same-sex couples is often called - means granting equal rights and full legal recognition of same-sex partnerships on the part of the state. The expectation is that it will also contribute to a reduction of discrimination against homosexual people in society.

The European part of the Netherlands became the first country to allow same-sex couples to marry in 2001.

On 11 September 2001, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the USA took place, killing around 3000 people. The attacks are often described as a historical turning point and caused ongoing debates in both the USA and Europe about domestic and foreign policy changes. They brought the war in Afghanistan into a new phase and served as a justification for the war in Iraq that began two years later. Based on the event, tensions rose between the Muslim and Western worlds.

On 1 January 2002, the euro was introduced as cash in the European Union.

The Elbe flood is called a flood event classified as the flood of the century.

The 2003 heat wave in Europe peaked during the first half of August 2003.

Due to its duration and intensity, with new temperature records in numerous cities, the summer of the century caused by High Michaela is one of the most important recent meteorological phenomena in Europe.

With an estimated 45,000 to 70,000 fatalities and an economic loss of an estimated 13 billion US dollars, it is one of the most devastating natural disasters worldwide in the previous 40 years, was one of the most severe natural disasters in Europe in the previous 100 years and probably the worst severe weather event on the continent since the beginning of modern historiography.

The more southern European countries were particularly affected by the heatwave; France, northern Italy, Spain and Portugal suffered the most, as did the Maghrebian Mediterranean coast. In Amareleja in the Alentejo in southern Portugal, the temperature reached an all-time high of 47.4 °C on 1 August.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook as a student at Harvard University as a platform for fellow students to connect with each other.

Ten countries joined the European Union in the 2004 EU enlargement: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. After this fifth and largest enlargement to date, the European Union consisted of 25 Member States.

Hurricane Katrina is considered one of the most devastating natural disasters in the history of the United States. The hurricane caused enormous damage in the southeastern parts of the USA at the end of August 2005, especially on the Gulf Coast there, and at times reached level 5. The states affected included Florida, Louisiana (especially the greater New Orleans area), Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

The storm and its aftermath claimed the lives of 1836 people. The property damage amounted to about 108 billion US dollars. The city of New Orleans was particularly hard hit: Due to its geographical location, two breaches in the levee system caused up to 80 percent of the city area to be under water up to 7.60 metres deep.

Barack Obama was the first African-American to assume the US presidency in January 2009.

Starting with the revolution in Tunisia, protests, uprisings and revolutions in several states in the Arab world were directed against the authoritarian ruling regimes and the political and social structures of these countries.

On September 17, 2011, the first protests of the Occupy Wall Street movement took place, which formed the largest protest movement in North America just one month later. Concrete demands are not mentioned, but most of the actions are directed against social inequalities, speculative transactions of banks as well as the influence of the economy on politics. Subsequently, protest actions with similar goals also took place in other countries.

In 2012, the label Europa largely ceased the production of radio play cassettes. Sony has not produced any more cassette Walkmans since 2010 and Pallas, one of the last major music cassette manufacturers, closed down. After 50 years, the cassette era has come to an end. Tape salad has become listening history.

Nelson Mandela dies in Johannesburg on December 5, 2013. Mandela was a leading South African activist and politician in the decades-long resistance against apartheid and the first black president of his country from 1994 to 1999.

He became involved in the African National Congress in 1944. Because of his activities against apartheid policies in his homeland, Mandela had to spend a total of 27 years in prison as a political prisoner from 1963 to 1990.

Mandela is considered an outstanding representative of the struggle for freedom against oppression and social injustice. He was the most important pioneer of the conciliatory transition from apartheid to an equality-oriented, democratic state in South Africa. In 1993, he was therefore awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Even during his lifetime, Mandela became a political and moral role model for many people around the world.

Ebola fever epidemic in West Africa.

IS engages in strident iconoclasm and systematically destroys cultural assets from the pre-Islamic past.

In Europe, 2015 was marked by a refugee crisis and terrorist attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo in January and on several locations in November. Germany was marked by the Germanwings crash in the French Alps and the VW emissions scandal. In Austria, 2015 was also marked by the Graz rampage and the refugee tragedy near Parndorf. In addition, the Paris Agreement, which was to determine climate policy in the coming years, was adopted.

The year 2016 was marked by the Brexit referendum. The UK's exit from the EU, often referred to as Brexit, took place on January 31, 2020. As of January 1, 2021, the UK is no longer part of the EU single market and customs union.

Fridays for Future (FFF), or in the original Swedish Skolstrejk för Klimatet, is a global, social movement based on pupils and students who campaign for the most comprehensive, rapid and efficient climate protection measures possible. The central goal is to meet the 1.5-degree target set by the United Nations at the 2015 World Climate Conference in Paris. Friday for Future is part of the global climate movement.

Following the example of the initiator Greta Thunberg, students go on strike on Fridays and take to the streets to demonstrate for an effective climate policy. The protest takes place worldwide and is organized by students; for example, nearly 1.8 million people are reported to have participated in FFF's demonstrations on March 15, 2019, the first globally organized climate strike.

The year 2020 was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in numerous restrictions in the cultural, social, and economic spheres.

On 24.2.2022 the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine began. Since then, Russia's war of aggression has continued with increasing severity and destruction.