1900 in Germany

Incumbents

National level

• Kaiser – Wilhelm II
• Chancellor – Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst to 17 October, then Bernhard von Bülow

  State level

Kingdoms

• King of Bavaria – Otto of Bavaria
• King of Prussia – Kaiser Wilhelm II
• King of Saxony – Albert of Saxony
• King of Württemberg – William II of Württemberg

  Grand Duchies

• Grand Duke of Baden – Frederick I
• Grand Duke of Hesse – Ernest Louis
• Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin – Frederick Francis IV
• Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz – Frederick William
• Grand Duke of Oldenburg – Peter II to 13 June, then Frederick Augustus II
• Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach – Charles Alexander

  Principalities

• Schaumburg-Lippe – George, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe
• Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt – Günther Victor, Prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
• Schwarzburg-Sondershausen – Karl Günther, Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
• Principality of Lippe – Alexander, Prince of Lippe
• Reuss Elder Line – Heinrich XXII, Prince Reuss of Greiz
• Reuss Younger Line – Heinrich XIV, Prince Reuss Younger Line
• Waldeck and Pyrmont – Friedrich, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont

  Duchies

• Duke of Anhalt – Frederick I, Duke of Anhalt
• Duke of Brunswick – Prince Albert of Prussia
• Duke of Saxe-Altenburg – Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg
• Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha – Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to 30 July, then Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
• Duke of Saxe-Meiningen – Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen

  Colonial Governors

• Cameroon – Jesko von Puttkamer ' to 17 January, then August Köhler to 31 July, then...Dehl, ' to 6 September, then...von Kamptz ' to 15 November, then again Jesko von Puttkamer '
• Kiaochow – Otto Jäschke
• German East Africa – Eduard von Liebert
• German New Guinea – Rudolf von Bennigsen
• German Samoa – Wilhelm Solf
• German South-West Africa – Theodor Leutwein
• Togoland – August Köhler

  Events

• 4 January – Riots break out as miners go on strike.
• 6 January – The German steamer Herzog was seized by the British warship HMS Thetis outside of Delagoa Bay in East Africa, on suspicions that it was carrying supplies to Boer troops. The Portuguese colonial Governor of Zambesia was among the passengers After none were found, the ship and its crew were released on 22 January.
• 1 March – The German flag was formally hoisted at Apia, the capital of Samoa, and Wilhelm Solf became the colony's first governor. Chief Mata'afa, who had fought against the Germans, and Chief Tamasese, who had been the puppet ruler during German occupation, reconciled. Mata'afa was named as the Paramount Chief of the Western Samoa colony, although Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II was designated as the Paramount King.
• 1 April – The 6th Royal Bavarian Division is raised as anew addition to the German Imperial Army
• 13 June – When three Chinese Boxers came too close to the German legation, one of them, a young man, was captured by the German guards. Baron von Ketteler, the German minister thrashed the Boxer with his cane, ordered his guards to extend the beating, and warned the Chinese Foreign Ministry that the boy would die. Over the next few days, the foreign diplomats began shooting at Chinese nationals near the legation quarter. Von Ketteler himself would be killed on June 20. The same day, communication between the foreign embassies and the rest of the world was halted as their telegraph lines were severed.
• 14 June – At 7:00 pm, German embassy guards, under the direction of Ambassador Ketteler, fired on Boxer rebels outside the legation quarter, killing 20. Lancelot Giles of the British embassy, recorded the incident in his diary that night, noting the furious shouts from a crowd trying to get into the city. G.E. Morrison, correspondent for the London Times, noted another incident where 45 Chinese were killed in a raid by the Europeans on a temple.
• 14 June – The Reichstag approves a second law that allows the expansion of the Imperial German Navy.
• 20 June – Clemens von Ketteler, the German ambassador to China, was murdered as he and an aide went to the Chinese Foreign Ministry without their guards. With seven hours left until a 4 p.m. deadline for all foreigners to leave Beijing, Baron von Ketteler defied his fellow ambassadors and left the safety of the diplomatic quarter. Von Ketteler was shot and killed as he approached the Zongli Yamen. His interpreter, Heinrich Cordes, survived to return to the embassy, at which point evacuation was no longer an option. American ambassador Conger would later report that he had learned "that Prince Tuan had planned to have his soldiers massacre all the foreign ministers at the Tsungli Yamen on June 20. But...the impatient soldiers prematurely attacked and killed Baron von Kettler... we were not invited to the Tsungli Yamen, and so were saved. The directive to Mr. Conger stated, "The princes and ministers...beg that within twenty-four hours the minister of the United States, with his family... and taking his guards, keeping them under control, will leave for Tientsin, in order to avoid danger. An escort of troops has been dispatched to give protection en route, and the local officials have been also notified to allow the minister's party to pass." At 4:00 p.m., Chinese troops began their siege of the foreign legations quarter, where 900 foreigners, 523 defenders, and 3,000 Chinese Christians held out behind the walls. The siege would last 55 days.
• 21 June – China formally declared war on Germany.
• 14 July – In China, Tientsin was captured by the Allied forces after a three-day battle. The Allies had 775 killed or wounded, mostly from Russian troops and Japanese troops under the command of the Japanese Colonel Kuriya. Parties of German and French soldiers destroyed the enemy's guns, while American, British, Japanese and Austrian troops, and the Welsh Fussillers captured the arsenal.
• 27 July – Kaiser Wilhelm II gave the infamous "Huns Speech" at Bremerhaven as he dispatched troops to fight in China. The most inflammatory line was, "Wie vor tausend Jahren die Hunnen unter ihrem König Etzel sich einen Namen gemacht, der sie noch jetzt in Überlieferung und Märchen gewaltig erscheinen läßt, so möge der Name Deutscher in China auf 1000 Jahre durch euch in einer Weise bestätigt werden, daß es niemals wieder ein Chinese wagt, einen Deutschen scheel anzusehen!". "Just as the Huns under their King Atilla made a name for themselves a thousand years ago which still, in saga and tradition, makes them appear powerful, so may the name "German" be impressed by you for a thousand years, that no Chinese will ever dare again look askance at a German!" The Germans were, for a century thereafter, referred to as "Huns".
• 17 October – Bernhard von Bülow became the fourth Chancellor of the German Empire, appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm I. The former Foreign Secretary succeeded Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe, who resigned because of his age and health.
• 16 November – During a parade in Breslau,, a woman threw a hatchet at the open carriage of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Selma Schnapke, later ruled to be insane, threw well enough that the "hand chopper" struck the imperial carriage, and was arrested.
• 1 December – A census of the German Empire was taken. Provisional figures showed a population of 56,345,014.
• 31 December – At 3:00 in the afternoon in Beijing, Su-Hai, identified as the man who had killed Baron von Ketteler, Germany's minister to China, on June 20, became the last prominent person to die in the 19th century. Su-Hai was beheaded at the scene of the crime.

  Architecture

• The Salzgitter Bismarck Tower is completed.

  Commerce

• 3 June – A series of meat inspection laws, at the time the most comprehensive in the world, are introduced.
• 1 September – The German-American Telegraph Company opened the first direct line between Germany and the United States. At 7,917 kilometres or 4,919 miles, the line was the longest transatlantic cable to that time, running from Emden to New York City, via the Azores Islands.

  Undated

• The Adler automobile company is established.

  Diplomacy

• 14 January – The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899, in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands.
• 16 February – In Washington, British Ambassador Lord Pauncefote, and German Ambassador Baron Theodor von Holleben met with Secretary of State Hay at the State Department, and exchanged ratifications of the Samoan Treaty signed by all three nations. "Secretary Hay retained for the United States the copy of the treaty which was ratified by the United States Senate. He handed to Lord Pauncefote and to Herr von Holleben copies of the treaty bearing the signatures of the President and himself", reported the New York Times. Similar proceedings took place in London and in Berlin with the foreign ministers and ambassadors, completing the Tripartite Convention of 1899. Under the treaty, the Pacific islands of Samoa were divided between the U.S. and Germany.
• 16 October – Germany and the UK signed an agreement in London, providing that they would oppose the partition of China into spheres of influence. The "Yangtze Agreement", signed by Lord Salisbury and Ambassador Hatzfeldt, was an endorsement of the Open Door Policy proposed by the United States for free trade in China.
• 5 December – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy signed a treaty providing that their navies would work together in the event of an attack on either nation by France or Russia.

  Education

• Women in Germany demand the right to participate in university entrance exams.

  Science

• 7 March – A new era in transportation safety began on reports of the first successful transmission of wireless signals from a passenger ship to a distant receiver. The German steamer SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, carrying 1,500 passengers, transmitted from on ship to Borkum, fifty miles away.
• 7 April – At Thomas Edison's laboratory, an agent of the Goldschmidt Chemische-Thermo Industrie of Essen, Germany, demonstrated a process to melt iron in five seconds. "Louis Dreyfus of Frankfort-on-Main...showed Mr. Edison his new process for attaining an enormous degree of heat in an incredibly short space of time by the combustion of a certain chemical compound which the inventor keeps a secret," the New York Times reported, "then placed a six-inch long iron wrench in a crucible and created a fire that reached 3,000 degrees centigrade."
• 16 August – A German excavation at the Tel Amran ibn Ali, near the Babylonian temple at Etemenanki, German excavators unearthed a glazed amphora with 10,000 coins dating from the 7th century BC.
• 15 October – Questionnaires were sent to every physician in Germany in the first attempt to make a study on the prevalence of cancer.
• 14 December – On a date now considered to be the birthday of quantum mechanics, Max Planck presented his paper Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung in Normalspektrum at a meeting of the German Physical Society in Berlin.

  Sport

• 27 February – Foundation of Bayern Munich.
• 14 May – 28 October – The 1900 Summer Olympics takes place in Paris, France. Germany finishes seventh on the overall medal table with four gold medals, two silver and two bronze.
• 1 August – Foundation of Borussia Mönchengladbach
• 4 November – The German Rugby Federation was founded at Kassel.
• The inaugural BMW Open tennis event is held by the Münchner Tennis- und Turnierclub Iphitos club.

  Transport

• 10 January – The Deutschland, operated by the Hamburg-American Line and promising to be the fastest passenger ship to that time, was launched from the shipyards at Stettin, Germany.
• 16 June – In Lübeck, Germany, the Elbe-Lübeck Canal, in length, was formally opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. The canal took five years to build at a cost of nearly six million dollars at the time, and joined the Elbe River to the Trave, which in turn provided ocean access at the Baltic Sea.
• 30 June – At Pier 8 in Hoboken, New Jersey, cotton bales and barrels of turpentine and oil caught fire around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. In less than 15 minutes, high winds spread the blaze a quarter of a mile along the port and on to the four German steamships moored there. The Saale and the Main, each with 150 crew on board, were destroyed, and the was heavily damaged. On the Saale, the portholes were too narrow for the men inside to escape, and most on board burned to death. The huge liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was saved by being towed into the Hudson River. Despite the best efforts of the Hoboken and New York fire departments to save the piers and the ships, respectively, 326 people were killed.
• 2 July – Starting at 8:03 pm, the first rigid airship flew from a floating hangar on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen. Luftschiff Zeppelin 1, with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and four others aboard, flew at an altitude of, going in 18 minutes before being forced to land due to a broken part.
• 12 July – A German cruise liner, the SS Deutschland, broke the Blue Riband record for the first time with an average speed of.
• 16 December – The German training frigate Gneisenau, with 450 naval cadets on board, sank in a storm during exercises off of the Spanish coast at Malaga, drowning 136.

  Publications

• 24 December – Iskra, a newspaper published by Vladimir Lenin in support of Bolshevik rebellion in Russia, was published for the first time, printed in Leipzig.

  Births

• 2 March – Kurt Weill, composer, in Dessau
• 10 March – Erich Kästner, last surviving German veteran of World War I
• 23 March – Erich Fromm, psychologist and philosopher
• 14 April – Hermann Bartels, architect
• 21 April – Hans Fritzsche, Nazi official
• 12 May – Helene Weigel, actress
• 15 May – Franz Ollendorff, German-born Israeli physicist
• 23 May – Hans Frank, Nazi military governor of Poland 1939–1945
• 3 June – Leo Picard, German-born Israeli geologist and an expert in the field of hydrology
• 17 June – Martin Bormann, Deputy Führer of Germany, 1941–1945
• 25 August – Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, German Jewish physician and biochemist and Nobel laureate
• 26 August – Hellmuth Walter, rocket engineer
• 25 September – Fritz Kolbe, diplomat and spy
• 1 October – Bruno Klopfer, psychologist
• 7 October – Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS
• 19 October – Fritz Kranefuss, industrialist
• 3 November – Adolf "Adi" Dassler, founder of the Adidas shoe company
• 16 December – Rudolf Diels, founder of the Gestapo

  Deaths