Neil MacGregor focuses on two great emblems of Germany's national diet: beer and sausages. He visits Munich to find out how regional specialities represent centuries of regional history and diversity.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor visits the Walhalla, one of the most idiosyncratic expressions of national identity in 19th century Europe - a temple to German-ness, modelled on the Parthenon, built high above the Danube in Bavaria. It honours almost 200 people, from early rulers and kings to composers, poets and scientists.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Continuing his focus on the things which bind Germans together, Neil MacGregor examines the life and work of Goethe, the greatest of all German poets: "There is a case for arguing that if Americans are one nation under God, the Germans are one nation under Goethe. And there is no doubt that it was Goethe, more than anyone else, who made German a language read - and spoken - by educated Europe."

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Continuing a week of programmes with a focus on the things which bind Germans together, Neil MacGregor reveals how the fairy tales collected by the Grimms and the landscape art of Caspar David Friedrich played a vital role in re-establishing an identity for German-speaking people who had been defeated by Napoleon.

While the Grimms were studying the German language and the inner German-ness present in the folk-tales they collected, Friedrich used landscape as the external vision of being German.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor continues his series with a week of programmes with a focus on the things which bind Germans together - ranging from the importance of the great German writer Goethe, and the significance of the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, to the long-standing history of German beer and sausages.

He begins with the story of how Martin Luther created the modern German language, through his translation of the Bible.

Luther is often, in German history, seen as the Great Divider. His attacks on his opponents were pitiless, not least his writings against the Jews. But he is also, unquestionably, a great Uniter - almost single-handedly he created the modern German language which, in the centuries that followed, proved a unifying force during times of destruction and disintegration.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor discovers how coins reveal the range and diversity of the Holy Roman Empire, with around 200 different currencies struck in the different territories of Germany.

It's an extraordinarily immediate and physical way of grasping the complexity and the confusion of the Holy Roman Empire, because every coin represents a kind of sovereignty. To be able to strike a coin you needed to be the ruler in your territory - and every coin speaks of a particular state, with its particular laws and a whole set of traditions.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor visits Strasbourg, now in France, but also a city with a key place in German history, culture and precision engineering, as revealed by a model of the cathedral clock, now in the British Museum.

When the writer Goethe stood in front of Strasbourg's Cathedral, he discovered two things: the transporting, transforming force of Gothic architecture and one aspect of what it meant to him to be German.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Continuing the week's theme of Germany's floating frontiers, Neil MacGregor visits two cities now beyond Germany's present borders, but which played important roles in Germany's intellectual and literary history.

Kaliningrad, on the Baltic, became part of the Soviet Union in 1945, and is now part of Russia. But for centuries it was Königsberg, a major Prussian city, and birthplace of the philosopher Immanuel Kant - and so central to the intellectual history of Germany.

Neil also visits the Czech city of Prague, once home to a large German-speaking community, which included Franz Kafka, one of the most acclaimed writers in the German language.

Today neither Russian-speaking Kaliningrad nor Czech-speaking Prague are in any sense German - but what is their place within the memories of Germany?

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor examines the story of the two Germanys, East and West, created in 1949, through objects including a wet suit used in an escape attempt from the East in 1987, which was later used as a training device by the Stasi, the East German secret police.

Neil also focuses on another Stasi training device, a model of Friedrichstrasse Station, a border crossing point in the divided Berlin, and reflects on the life and work of the East German writer Christa Wolf.

Her novel Der Geteilte Himmel - The Divided Heaven, or The Divided Sky - was published in 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall went up. It made Christa Wolf's reputation, and has been seen as the definitive account of the divergence of the two Germanys, as seen from the East. Yet Wolf's own position within the East German state was not simple, and she later questioned whether her own memories were reliable.

Producer Paul Kobrak.

Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, begins his series examining 600 years of German history through objects, with a reflection on Germany's floating frontiers.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to the reunified modern Germany, Neil visits the Brandenburg Gate.

In November 1989 the East Berlin crowds gathered there and cheered and then poured into West Berlin as the Berlin Wall fell and the world changed. It was there in July 2014 that a huge crowd celebrated Germany's victory in the World Cup in Brazil. In 1950 the first major demonstration was held there to protest against Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe: the crowd pulled down the red flag that flew over the Brandenburg Gate and demanded free elections. And in 1806 Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate, after humiliating the Prussian army.

From this focal point of modern Germany, Neil begins a 30 part series which reveals the profound influence of Germany's history, culture and inventiveness across Europe, as well as the catastrophic events of the 20th century.