OCR Historical Themes: Challenge of German Nationalism 1789-1919

anyone else doing this exam?

I am!!

Nice, seems like quite a rare exam. How are you finding it? Personally I think it's the hardest technique of any exam I've done. Last year you could just learn facts for the non-source paper and get 100ums, but on this you literally have to forget 99.9% of the course and bull**** your way through it. I'm finding it quite worrying how it seems like a lot just depends on the person who's marking it and their opinion rather than any specific technique or factual requirements/arguments etc.

I did this back when I did A Levels - beautiful course and the exam is easy when you crack the technique

What did you get out of interest? I've found that, once you've been through the course and understand the basic events, there doesn't seem to be a lot to revise content-wise, did you feel that as well?

If I remember correctly I think I got an A in that exam All one needs to remember is the key events and then refer them to the question; no massive elaboration is needed is needed on each date but rather just a brief explaination of it

What would you say are your main tips? and how did you go about revising the content and condensing it to what is necessary for answering the question

I would write a timeline of key dates related to German nationalism (sounds obvious but remembering the dates and events is important). Then what I would do is go through past papers and list the questions - you'll notice a lot of them are similar - and then under each one list the dates and points you think you would mention e.g.

To what extent were the german people united from 1789 to 1919?
- French Revolution and fighting the German kingdoms
- Holy Roman Empire Disolved
- Confederation of the Rhine
- German Confederation and reduction of 300 plus states to 30ish
- Zollverein
...
...
- Franco-Prussian War
- Bismarck's internal policies
...
etc etc

And then when you come to write an answer for each question, you will know which dates to use and which to ignore; in your list, time might constrain you so you either have to make clear succinct points or you have to only use dates you feel to be really important.

When answering the question, I think people tend to think 'how the hell am I meant to cover over 100 years in just over an hour?!', but that's because they tend to want to elaborate on every single point. What I was taught to do was to constantly refer back to the question whilst making clear points e.g. 'the reduction of over 300 states into just over 30 arguably meant the German people were more united; their hatred of the french during the napoleonic wars was a unifying factor but since the war was over, the people no longer needed to be united in any great capacity, and so they still largely harboured their particularist sentiments - thus we can see that the German people were not united at this point. This feeling did not change until the liberal movement.........' - in this example I haven't dwelled on how Napoleon treated the Germans or spoken about the nationalist german armies in the napoleonic wars or elaborated beyond that which I felt was necessary to say.
Alhamdulillah I had a very good teacher and he photocopied quite a lot of A* grade exams that students of his had done in the past and he gave them to us, so we were able to see how they were writing and we could pick bits out of their style that we liked and adopted things accordingly - a thing I picked up for example was using 'thus we can see' a lot because its a brilliant way to refer back to the question lol

Idk if that helped but I'm not sure what else to say since its been almost 3 years since I did German Nationalism

Thanks a tonne for the tips! I have found them useful in my revision

Currently going to be doing this tomorrow morning, Goodluck everyone.

I would write a timeline of key dates related to German nationalism (sounds obvious but remembering the dates and events is important). Then what I would do is go through past papers and list the questions - you'll notice a lot of them are similar - and then under each one list the dates and points you think you would mention e.g.

To what extent were the german people united from 1789 to 1919?
- French Revolution and fighting the German kingdoms
- Holy Roman Empire Disolved
- Confederation of the Rhine
- German Confederation and reduction of 300 plus states to 30ish
- Zollverein
...
...
- Franco-Prussian War
- Bismarck's internal policies
...
etc etc

And then when you come to write an answer for each question, you will know which dates to use and which to ignore; in your list, time might constrain you so you either have to make clear succinct points or you have to only use dates you feel to be really important.

When answering the question, I think people tend to think 'how the hell am I meant to cover over 100 years in just over an hour?!', but that's because they tend to want to elaborate on every single point. What I was taught to do was to constantly refer back to the question whilst making clear points e.g. 'the reduction of over 300 states into just over 30 arguably meant the German people were more united; their hatred of the french during the napoleonic wars was a unifying factor but since the war was over, the people no longer needed to be united in any great capacity, and so they still largely harboured their particularist sentiments - thus we can see that the German people were not united at this point. This feeling did not change until the liberal movement.........' - in this example I haven't dwelled on how Napoleon treated the Germans or spoken about the nationalist german armies in the napoleonic wars or elaborated beyond that which I felt was necessary to say.
Alhamdulillah I had a very good teacher and he photocopied quite a lot of A* grade exams that students of his had done in the past and he gave them to us, so we were able to see how they were writing and we could pick bits out of their style that we liked and adopted things accordingly - a thing I picked up for example was using 'thus we can see' a lot because its a brilliant way to refer back to the question lol

Idk if that helped but I'm not sure what else to say since its been almost 3 years since I did German Nationalism