One example is the visit to Canossa (1077) by the Roman-German emperor Henry IV, who wanted to have his excommunication lifted by the pope who was staying there (Investiture Controversy).

Starting in Italy in the late 14th century, the new intellectual movements (the Renaissance and Humanism) spread throughout Europe and also influenced the German-speaking world.

One consequence of this was the Sacco di Roma of 1527, when a rebellious army, including German lansquenets, devastated and plundered the 'eternal city'.

In the preliminary peace treaty of Leoben (signed on April 18, 1797 and ratified on May 24), Austria had to renounce the Duchy of Milan, among other things, and be prepared to settle the conflict with France that had been ongoing since 1792.

The treaty of Campo Formio was signed on October 17, 1797; in it, Napoleon forced the end of the Republic of Venice, which had existed since the 7th/8th century.

While the last German war of unification against France in 1870/71 led to the foundation of the German Empire, the Italians took advantage of the war-related withdrawal of French protection troops to annex the Papal States and declare Rome the Italian capital, thus incorporating the papal domains into the new nation state.

This ideology, which called for all Italians to be united in one state, was directed against Austria, which still ruled over Trentino and Istria, as well as other regions.

The 1914 Septemberprogramm authorized by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg proposed the creation of a Central European Economic Union, comprising a number of European countries, including Germany and possibly Italy, in which, as the Chancellor secretly stressed, there was to be a semblance of equality among the member states, but in fact it was to be under German leadership to stabilize Germany's economic predominance in Central Europe, with co-author Kurt Riezler admitting that the union would be a veiled form of German domination in Europe (see also: Mitteleuropa).

In October 1922, the Fascists led by Benito Mussolini took advantage of the political situation after the War to march on Rome and subsequently establish a dictatorship.

Other important points in German-Italian relations in these years were the joint intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the annexation of Austria to Germany in 1938, which Mussolini ultimately accepted (South Tyrol remained with Italy; according to the Hitler-Mussolini Agreement, the German-speaking South Tyroleans could only choose between resettlement in the German Reich or giving up their culture and mother tongue) and the alliance treaty of May 22, 1939, known as the Pact of Steel.

He said to the Italian Army Chief-of-Staff, Pietro Badoglio:I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought.

[5] Mussolini also set his own priorities, which often became a strategic problem for the German Wehrmacht (for example the completely failed Italian attack on Greece in 1940 forcing Germany to intervene).

[8] A third meeting, this time at the Brenner Pass on 4 October 1940, included discussions about the potential future roles of Francoist Spain and Vichy France in the Axis Powers.

[9] The two dictators met a fourth time soon after, on 28 October, discussing the Greco-Italian War which had been unleashed by the Italian army on the same day.

[12] This step was only conducted on the night of 21/22 June, i.e. the morning of the invasion, when Otto Christian von Bismarck transmitted Hitler's lengthy explanation by letter to Galeazzo Ciano.

[13] In 1942, the two leaders met for the seventh time in Salzburg on 29/30 April 1942, discussing the process of the joint war effort in North Africa and the prospect of Unternehmen Herkules, the planned invasion of British-controlled Malta.

For the tenth and final conference between the two dictators at Salzburg-Klessheim on 22/23 April 1944, Mussolini had already been installed as the leader of the Italian Social Republic (see below).

[17] The two men saw each other for a final time on 20 July 1944 in the immediate aftermath of the Stauffenberg assassination attempt, when Mussolini paid the injured Hitler a consolation visit, though this did not constitute a diplomatic conference.

[citation needed] During this time Hitler sought to regain Mussolini's political support back into Italy's government.

After the two world wars, Italy under Alcide De Gasperi and Germany (1949 to 1963 under Konrad Adenauer) were among the founding fathers of a united Europe (1951/52: European Coal and Steel Community), which was also intended to serve the reconciliation of the two peoples.

Although there was an economic miracle in both countries in the post-war period, the south of Italy in particular remained underdeveloped; after a recruitment agreement (1955), many Italians tried their luck in West Germany as immigrants.

At a press conference in 2011, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy only responded with a smile when asked whether they still trusted Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned in November 2011, under pressure from other EU countries.

Die Zeit wrote in May 2020:If [...] Germany then imposes a ban on the export of medical supplies to Italy, even though the death toll there has already skyrocketed, or if there is a dispute for weeks about whether the rich north of Europe should help the poorer south financially with reconstruction or not, then there is not much left of the idea of European values and European solidarity.