Richard Strauss completes his Four Last Songs in the year before his death

The Soviet Union imposes a blockade on Berlin by denying the other powers access through the land corridor to the city

The Western powrers respond to the Soviet blockade by launching the Berlin airlift, flying in necessary provisions of every kind

Karl von Frisch demonstrates that bees make use of the polarized light of the sun to calculate direction

The Christian Democrats win the first elections in Germany since 1933, and Konrad Adenauer becomes chancellor of West Germany

Bertolt Brecht establishes a new theatrical company, the Berliner Ensemble, in East Germany

The Soviet Union lifts the blockade on Berlin and the airlift ends, after providing for nearly a year a lifeline to the city

The Federal Republic of Germany is formed from the British, French and US zones of occupation

The USSR grants nominal independence to east Germany as the newly established German Democratic Republic

Kirsten Flagstad sings the posthumous premiere, in London, of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs

Erwin Müller completes his development of the field ion microscope, the first instrument capable of observing atoms

Hans Werner Henze's first full-length opera, Boulevard Solitude, has its premiere in Hanover

The German firm NSU builds the first working example of the rotary engine invented in 1924 by Felix Wankel

Relations are normalized between West Germany and the USA, France and Britain, ending the postwar period of occupation

Thomas Mann publishes a longer but still incomplete version of his novel Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man

Konrad Adenauer negotiates the release of the last 10,000 German prisoners of war held in the USSR

Karlheinz Stockhausen's Song of the Children combines electronic sounds and the human voice

Hans Werner Henze's opera The Stag King has its premiere in Berlin

Six founding nations (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, West Germany) establish the European Economic Community (EEC)

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen uses three separate orchestras to achieve acoustic space in Gruppen

Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka's play The Swamp Dwellers is produced in London

German novelist Günter Grass has an immediate success with his first novel, The Tin Drum

Niger becomes independent, with Hamani Diori as the new nation's first president

British choreographer John Cranko becomes director of the Stuttgart Ballet

The drug Thalidomide, synthesized in West Germany, is shown to have been the cause of severe defects in about 12,000 children born in 46 countries