Germany: Memories of a Nation Folgen

Neil MacGregor focuses on a small hand-cart to tell the story of the forced movement of more than 12 million Germans, who fled or were forced out of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945.For many, the only way of transporting their possessions was a hand-cart, as they walked to parts of Germany they had never seen before. And Neil also reflects on the 1949 Berlin staging of Brecht's play Mother Courage, examining a model of the production's set. Fiona Shaw, who has played the title role, discusses how the image of Mother Courage pulling her cart, amidst the devastation of war, became one of the most memorable stage pictures of the 20th century.Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor visits Buchenwald, one of the earliest and largest concentration camps.Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor examines how the Nazis attacked art they viewed as 'entartet' - degenerate. He charts how Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, led a process designed to purify all German culture, including books, music, paintings and pottery. The programme focuses on a vase created by Grete Marks, with an evident debt to Chinese ceramics, and a loose brush-splashed glaze suggestive of modernist painting. Goebbels condemned this vase in his newspaper Der Angriff - The Attack. Grete Marks, who was Jewish and had trained at the Bauhaus, left Germany for England. Producer Paul Kobrak.