Empire, Division & Revolution: Germany, Czech Republic & Austria

Three capitals show how empires fell, a continent was divided and a wall came down.

In Berlin, students visit the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße, the Topography of Terror and the Stasi Museum, studying how the city was divided and how East Germany watched its own citizens. In Prague, they visit Prague Castle, the Jewish Quarter and the Museum of Communism, and learn how the 1989 Velvet Revolution ended one-party rule largely peacefully. In Vienna, the Habsburg capital for centuries, Schönbrunn Palace and the Hofburg show how a multi-ethnic empire was ruled and why its collapse after 1918 reshaped Central Europe.