Years
Pictures
We have sifted through 7 million meters of film from 440 world archives and looked through
6000 articles from the newspapers in 36 countries - 60 editors, cameramen and research assistants worked on the series for three years
There are about 600 witnesses to different events including:
the last witness of the Titanic tragedy, Lenin's grandniece, Al Capone's grandnephew, the sons
of Mussolini and Chaplin, a nurse from Pearl Harbor, Hitler's secretary, survivors of Auschwitz,
the navigator of Nagasaki, the heroes of Mount Everest, an Apollo 11 astronaut, Edward Teller,
Shimon Peres, Helmut Kohl, the Pope and Ali Agce, Lech Walesa, Otto Habsburg, George Bush
and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Running time 100 × 10 minutes
Production cost : 5,5 mill. Euro
Years
Pictures
We show in chronological order what, how and why different events took place in the
20th century, 100 years, 100 events, 100 movies.
1900
Welcome to the 20th century
1901
The End of an Era
1903
Wright Brothers
1906
The Ruins
1907
Rasputin
On Monday, January 1st, the 20th
century begins. Cancan rhythms
dominate the avant garde capital,
Paris. There are terrible beliefs all
over the world...
With the death of Queen Victoria, the 19th century passes away
for good. The mourning puts in
touch II. Wilhelm with the whole
royal family the last...
Humanity"s first powered flight
takes place on December 17th,
1903 as the American Orville
Wright takes to the skies in his
self-made engine-powered a...
The San Francisco earthquake of
1906 was a major earthquake
which occurred in San Francisco,
California early on the morning
of Wednesday, April 18, ...
Rasputin was a Russian mystic
with an influence in the latter
days of the Romanov dynasty in
Russia. He was believed to have
been a psychic and faith...
1909
Suffragette Demonstrations
1911
The South Pole
1912
Titanic
1913
The German Kaiser
1914
Sarajevo
The campaign for women"s
suffrage was intensified by the
founding of the Women"s Social
and Political Union. The WSPU associated particularly with...
The Geographic South Pole is
the point where the earths axis of
rotation intersects the surface.
This is the point usually meant
when an unspecified...
The Titanic was the largest
passenger steamship in the world
at the time of her launching, and
her builders hoped that she
would dominate the transatl...
Wilhelm II of Prussia and
Germany, Friedrich Wilhelm
Viktor Albert von Hohenzollern
was the last German Emperor
(Kaiser) and the last...
On June 28th, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and
heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne, with his wife Countess
Sophie, was assassinated in...
Years
Pictures
1916
Verdun
1917
The Russian October Revolution
1918
Revolution
1919
Versailles
1920
Prohibition
The Battle of Verdun was a
major action in World War I. The
battle was fought between February 21 and December 19, 1916,
and resulted in nearly one...
The Russian Revolution of 1917
was a political movement in
Russia that climaxed in 1917 with
the overthrow of the provisional
government that had...
On November 9th, 1918, a man
leans out of a window in the
Reichstag and proclaims the
Republic. Philipp Scheidemann
was a German Social...
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles is
the peace treaty created as a
result of the twelve-month-long
Paris Peace Conference in 1919
which put an official...
At midnight on the night of
January 16th, 1920, one of the
personal habits and customs of
most Americans suddenly came
to a halt. Prohibition was mean...
1922
Mussolini
1922
Tutankhamen
1923
Putsch of Hitler
1924
Stalin / Lenin
1925
Charlie Chaplin
On October 24th, 1922, Benito
Mussolini, leader of the Fascist
party in Italy, announced at a
conference in Naples his intent
to seize power by marchi...
On November 26th, 1922,
archaeologists Howard Carter
and Lord Carnarvon discovered
the tomb of the boy Pharaoh
Tutankhamen in the Valley...
The attempted Beer Hall Putsch
(military coup) occurred between
the evening of Thursday,
November 8, 1923 and early
afternoon Friday...
January 21, 1924 - Vladimir
Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin
begins to purge his rivals to clear
way for his leadership. Stalin had
become the General Sec...
The Gold Rush is a 1925 silent
film comedy written, directed,
and starring Charlie Chaplin in
his Little Tramp role. He goes to
the Klondike in order...
Years
Pictures
1926
Josephine Baker
1927
Lindbergh
1928
Penicillin
1929
Black Friday
1930
Gandhi
Josephine endured a breach-ofcontract lawsuit about her
abandoning Le Revue Nègre for
a star billing at the Folies-Bergère
in 1926...
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.
was a pioneering United States
aviator famous for piloting the
first solo non-stop flight across
the Atlantic Ocean in...
Sir Alexander Fleming (August 6,
1881 – March 11, 1955) discovered the antibiotic substance
lysozyme and isolated the antibiotic substance penic...
Black Friday or the Wall Street
Crash refers to October 29, 1929,
the day when the New York
Stock Exchange crashed; this
event eventually led to the...
On March 12th, 1930 Mahatma
Gandhi sets off with 78 followers on a 200-mile protest march
towards the sea to protest the
British monopoly on salt...
1932
Weimar
1933
Seizure of power
1934
Mao
1936
Jesse Owens
1936
The Spanish Civil War
Perhaps the greatest catalyst for
the collapse of the Republic lies
in the Wall Street Crash, or more
correctly its aftermath. The
grounds for the...
On January 30, 1933, Adolf
Hitler was officially sworn in as
Chancellor in the Reichstag
chamber with thousands of Nazi
supporters looking on and...
The Long March was a massive
military retreat undertaken by the
Chinese Communist Army to
evade the pursuit of the
Kuomintang army...
While Germany dominated the
games, the many triumphs by
citizens of other nations was
seen as a rebuke to racist Nazi
philosophies. In particular, the...
The Spanish Civil War (1936 1939) was the result of complex
political differences between the
Republicans and the Nationalists.
The Republicans were...
Years
Pictures
1937
Hindenburg
1937
Stalin
1938
Munich Conference
1938
The Night of Broken Glass
1939
Hitler attacks Poland
On May 6, 1937 at 19:25, the
German zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was utterly
destroyed within a minute while
attempting to dock with its...
Joseph Stalin was a Bolshevik
revolutionary and a political
leader in the Soviet Union. Stalin
became general secretary of the
Soviet Communist Party...
The Munich Agreement was an
agreement regarding the Munich
Crisis between the major powers
of Europe after a conference
held in Munich in Germany...
Kristallnacht, also known as
Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht
and in English as The Night of
Broken Glass, was a massive
nationwide pogrom in Germany...
The Polish September Campaign
(alternatively referred to as the
German plan Fall Weiss) refers to
the conquest of Poland by the
armies of Nazi Germany...
1940
The Visit
1941
Operation Barbarossa
1941
Pearl Harbor
1942
Auschwitz
1943
Stalingrad
In May 1940 Hitler ordered his
forces to attack France, conquering the Netherlands, Luxembourg
and Belgium in the process.
France surrendered on 22th ...
Operation Barbarossa was the
German codename for Nazi
Germanys invasion of the Soviet
Union during World War II,
which commenced on...
On the morning of December 7,
1941, planes and midget submarines of the Imperial Japanese
Navy commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, carried...
Auschwitz is the name loosely
used to identify three main Nazi
German concentration camps
and 39 sub-camps. The name is
derived from the...
The Battle of Stalingrad was a
major turning point in World War
II, and is considered the bloodiest battle in human history. The
battle was marked by ...
Years
Pictures
1943
The Ghetto in Warsaw
1944
D-Day
1945
Capitulation
1945
Hiroshima
1946
The Nuremberg Trials
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,
sometimes called the Warsaw
Uprising 1943, was an insurrection in Polands Warsaw Ghetto
against Nazi Germany...
The Battle of Normandy was
fought in 1944 between the
German
forces
occupying
Western Europe and the invading American, British and...
On 2th May in 1945 the Soviet
Union announces the fall of
Berlin. Soviet soldiers hoist the
red flag over the Reichstag
building. The Battle of...
On 6th August in 1945 the United
States detonated an atomic bomb
nicknamed "Little Boy" on
Hiroshima, Japan at 8:16 AM
(local time). Nagasaki was the ...
The Nuremberg Trials is the
general name for two sets of
trials of Nazis involved in World
War II and the Holocaust. The
trials were held in the...
1947
Israel
1948
Raisin Bombers
1949
Founding of the German States
1951
Churchill
1953
Elizabeth II.
On 29th November the United
Nations General Assembly votes
to partition Palestine between
Arabs and Jews. Israel was established as an independent...
The Soviet Union blocked
Western rail and road access to
West Berlin from June 24, 1948 May 11, 1949. This Berlin Blockade was one of the major...
On May 23rd, 1949, the Federal
Republic of Germany was established. In 1949, during the Berlin
Blockade,
Western
forces
airlifted food and supplies in...
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer
Churchill was a British politician,
best known as Prime Minister of
the United Kingdom during
World War II. At various tim...
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
(born April 21st, 1926) is the
Queen regnant and Head of
State of Antigua and Barbuda,
Australia, The Bahamas...
Years
Pictures
1953
Mount Everest
1953
Upheaval in East Germany
1954
Bikini
1954
Marilyn Monroe
1955
Konrad Adenauer
Everest is the highest mountain
on Earth (as measured from sea
level). The summit ridge of the
mountain marks the border
between Nepal and Tibet. In...
The Uprising in 1953 in East
Germany took place in June and
July of 1953. A strike by Berlin
construction workers on the 16th
turned into a widespread...
Bikini Atoll (also known as
Pikinni Atoll) is an uninhabited 6
sqm atoll in one of the Micronesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
It is a member of the...
Marilyn Monroe (June 1st, 1926 –
August 5th, 1962) was a 20th
century American actress. Her
sizzling screen presence and
premature death would...
Konrad Adenauer was a German
statesman. Adenauer, a politician
in the Catholic Centre Party, was
Mayor of Cologne from 1917 to
1933, and as such...
1956
The riot in Hungary
1958
Elvis Presley
1959
Fidel Castro
1960
Adolf Eichmann
1961
The building of the wall
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
also known as the Hungarian
Uprising, was a revolt in
Hungary. The revolt was brutally
suppressed by the Soviet Union...
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8th,
1935 – August 16th, 1977), also
known as The King of Rock and
Roll, or as just simply The King,
was an America...
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born
August 13, 1926) has led Cuba
since 1959, when, leading the 26th
of July Movement, he helped
overthrow the dictatorsh...
Adolf Eichmann (March 19,
1906 – June 1, 1962) was a highranking official in Nazi Germany,
and served as an Obersturmbannführer in the S.S. He ...
The Berlin Wall was a long barrier
separating West Berlin from East
Berlin and the surrounding
territory of East Germany. Its
intent was to restrict a...
Years
Pictures
1962
Crisis in Cuba
1963
John F. Kennedy
1964
Cassius Clay
1965
Beatles
1966
The Wembley Goal
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a
tense confrontation between the
Soviet Union and the United
States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in...
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May
29th, 1917 – November 22nd,
1963), often referred to as Jack
Kennedy or JFK, was the 35th
(1961–1963) Pres...
Muhammad Ali (born January
17th, 1942, as Cassius Marcellus
Clay, Jr.) is an American boxer.
He was one of the world”s
greatest heavyweight boxe...
The Beatles were the most
influential popular music group
of the rock era, and the most
successful, with global sales
exceeding 1.1 billion records...
England, managed by Alf (later
Sir Alf) Ramsey, beat West
Germany at Wembley Stadium
4-2 after extra time in a thrilling
final at Wembley, when Geoff ...
1967
Benno Ohnesorg
1967
The Six-day-war
1968
Prague spring
1968
The death of a vietcong
1969
Neil Armstrong
Benno Ohnesorg (October 15th,
1940 - June 2nd, 1967) was a
German university student killed
by a police officer on June 2nd,
1967, during a demonstrat...
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War, also
known as the Six-Day War or
June War, was fought between
Israel and its Arab neighbors
Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. As a ...
The Prague Spring was a period
of political liberalization in
Czechoslovakia starting January
5th, 1968, and running until
August 20th of that same...
Execution in broad daylight
caught on camera. A police
captain from Saigon is seen shooting a Vietcong man in the head
right on film. As the bystander...
Neil Alden Armstrong (born
August 5th, 1930) is an American
test pilot, astronaut, and was the
first human being to walk on the
Moon. Armstrong then...
Years
Pictures
1970
Willy Brandt
1972
Attacks during the Olympic Games
1972
Kim Phuc
1974
Guillaume-Affair
1974
Watergate
Willy Brandt (December 18th,
1913 – October 8th, 1992) was a
left German politician and Chancellor of Germany from 1969 to
1974. The social demo...
The Munich Massacre occurred
at the 1972 Summer Olympics in
Munich,
Germany,
when
members of the Israeli Olympic
team were taken hostage by...
On June 8th, 1972, South
Vietnamese planes dropped a
napalm bomb on the village of
Trang Bang, Vietnam, suspected
by US Army forces of...
Around 1973, German security
organizations received information that one of Brandt”s personal
assistants, Günter Guillaume, was
a spy of the GDR...
The Watergate scandal (or just
"Watergate") was an American
political scandal and constitutional crisis of the 1970s, which
eventually led to the resi...
1975
Vietnam
1976
Soweto
1977
The hitchhike
1978
Test tube baby
1979
Ayatollah
By April, the weakened South
Vietnamese Army had collapsed
on all fronts. The powerful NVA
offensive forced South Vietnamese troops on a bloody retrea...
Soweto is an urban area in Johannesburg, in Gauteng province
South Africa . In 1950 during the
apartheid regime, Soweto was
constructed to be self-suf...
Hanns Martin Schleyer was a
german manager and employer
representative. Schleyer was
abducted on September 5, 1977
by the Red Army Faction...
Adolf Eichmann (March 19,
1906 – June 1, 1962) was a highranking official in Nazi Germany,
and served as an Obersturmbannführer in the S.S. He ...
The Iranian Revolution was the
1979 revolution that transformed
Iran from an autocratic pro-west
monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to an Islam...
Years
Pictures
1980
Solidarnosc
1981
Attempt on the Pope
1982
Falkland war
1983
Diary of Hitler
1985
AIDS
Gdansk was the scene of
anti-government demonstrations
which led to the downfall of
Poland"s communist leader
Wladyslaw Gomulka in...
His Holiness Pope John Paul II,
officially in Latin Ioannes Paulus
PP. II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła
(May 18, 1920 – April 2, 2005),
was Pope of ...
The Falklands War or the Malvinas War was an armed conflict
between Argentina and the
United Kingdom over the
Falkland Islands , also known...
In 1983, the German news magazine Stern published extracts
from what purported to be the
diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as
the Hitler Diaries. The mag...
AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome,
sometimes written Aids) is a
human disease character...
1986
Challenger
1986
Chernobyl
1987
Uwe Barschel
1988
Gladbeck
1989
The coming down of the
Berliner wall
STS-51-L was the 25th launch of
a Space Shuttle and the tenth
launch of the Challenger. The
vehicle exploded 73 seconds after
launch on January 28t...
The
Chernobyl
accident
occurred on April 26th, 1986, at
the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant in Ukraine (then part of the
Soviet Union). It is regarde...
CDU-politician, Uwe Barschel,
was, according to ex-Mossad
agent Victor Ostrovsky, murdered
in 1987 by a Mossad hit team in a
Swiss Hotel. According to...
A bank robbery in Gladbeck on
16 August. The gangsters,
Degowski, Rösner and a
girlfriend, take two women
hostage. The men are known...
On August 23, 1989, Hungary
removed its border restrictions
with Austria, and in September
more than 13,000 East Germans
escaped through Hungary ....
Years
Pictures
1990
The reunification
1991
Gulf War
1991
Take-over attempt in Moscow
1992
Omarska
1993
Somalia
German reunification took place
on October 3, 1990, when the
areas of the former German
Democratic Republic (GDR – in
English often called...
The Persian Gulf War was a
conflict between Iraq and a
coalition force of 34 nations
mandated by the United Nations
and led by the United States...
The Soviet Coup of 1991 or the
August Coup crushed the hopes
of
Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev that he could at least
hold the union together in a de...
Omarska is a town near Prijedor
in northwestern Bosnia and
Herzegovina. It includes an old
iron mine and ore processing
plant. Omarska gained world...
Somalia, formerly known as the
Somali Democratic Republic, is a
coastal nation in East Africa . It
currently exists solely in a de jure
capacity, whic...
1994
Nelson Mandela
1995
Yitzhak Rabin
1997
Lady Diana
1998
Bill Clinton
1999
End of a century
Years
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela,
(born 18 July 1918) before
becoming President of South
Africa, was one of its chief
anti-apartheid activists, and...
Yitzhak Rabin (March 1st, 1922 –
November 4th, 1995) was an
Israeli politician and military
general. He was the fifth Prime
Minister of Israel ...
Diana, Princess of Wales (1 July
1961 - 31 August 1997), was the
first wife of Prince Charles,
Prince of Wales. From her
marriage in 1981 to her...
William Jefferson Clinton (born
William Jefferson Blythe III on
August 19, 1946) was the 42nd
President of the United States
from 1993 to 2001. Before...
Pictures
During this century, man discovered the world: the South Pole,
Mount Everest, Space. He went
to the Moon, invented penicillin
which saved hundreds of ...