Germany

Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Federal Republic of Germany
Official flag	Official Coat of Arms
National information
National motto:	"Unity and Justice and Freedom." (German: "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit")
National anthem:	Das Lied der Deutschen
About the people
Official languages:	German
	Population: (# of people)
- Total:	83,251,851 (ranked 13)
- Density:	231 per km²
Geography / Places
	Here is the country on a map of the world.
Capital city:	Berlin
Largest city:	Berlin
	Area
- Total:	357,023 km2 (137,847.4 sq mi) (ranked 61)
- Water:	n/a km² (2.18%)
Politics / Government
Established:	Treaty of Verdun (843); January 18, 1871; May 23, 1949; October 3, 1990
Leaders:	President Horst Köhler; Chancellor Angela Merkel
Economy / Money
Currency:; (Name of money)	Euro (€)
International information
Time zone:	+01:00
Telephone dialing code:	49
Internet domain:	.DE

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This article is about the modern country named Germany. For other meanings of Germany, see German.

The Federal Republic of Germany also called Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland^[1] also known as Deutschland) is a country in Central Europe. To the north of Germany are the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the country of Denmark. To the east of Germany are the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. To the south of Germany are the countries of Austria and Switzerland. To the west of Germany are the countries of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

From 1949 to 1990, Germany was made up of two countries called West Germany and East Germany. During this time, the capital city of Berlin was divided into a west and an east part. On 13 August 1961, East Germany started to build the Berlin Wall between the two parts of Berlin. West Germany was one of the countries that started the European Union.^[2]

[change] History

Martin Luther, (1483–1546) initiated the Protestant Reformation.

Germany gained importance as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which was the first Reich, a word translated as empire. It was started by Charlemagne who became the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD, and it lasted until 1806, the time of the Napoleonic Wars.^[3]

The second Reich was started with a treaty in 1871 in Versailles.^[4] The biggest state in the new German Empire was Prussia. The Kings of Prussia were also "German Emperors", but they did not call themselves "Emperors of Germany". There were many other kingdoms, duchies and republics in the Empire, but not Austria. Germany stayed an empire for another 50 years.

The treaty of unification was made after Germany won the Franco-Prussian War with France in 1871. In World War I, Germany joined Austria-Hungary, and again declared war on France.^[4] The war became slow in the west and was fought in trenches, holes soldiers dug in the ground to protect themselves. Many men were killed on both sides. In the east the soldiers fought battles and the Germans won in the east. The war ended in 1918 because the Germans could not win in the west, and Germany's emperor had to give up his power.^[4] Germany became more strict, and France took Alsace from Germany. After a revolution, the Second Reich ended and the democratic Weimar Republic began.

After the war, there were a lot of problems with money in Germany because of the Peace Treaty of Versailles and the worldwide Great Depression.^[5]

The Third Reich was Nazi Germany; it lasted 12 years, from 1933 to 1945.^[6] It started after Adolf Hitler became the head of government. On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag (parliament) passed the Enabling Act, which let Hitler's government make decrees independently of the Reichstag and the presidency. This gave him total control of the country and the government.^[7] Hitler in effect became a dictator.

Hitler wanted to unify all Germans in one state, and did this by making places in Austria and Czechoslovakia where Germans lived part of the German Republic. However, Hitler started to abuse his power and declared himself "Führer" (leader). Hitler then started to claim nearby countries to be part of Germany, and took them over, beginning with Poland, and including parts of Russia, and the Baltic states. The invasion of Poland started World War II on 1 September 1939. In the beginning, Germany was winning, and quickly got control of most of Europe and a large part of the Soviet Union. After the Battle of Kursk, the German Eastern Front began a slow retreat until war's end. One reason was that Hitler refused to listen to his generals. On 8 May 1945, Germany gave up after Berlin was captured and Hitler had killed himself a week earlier. Because of the war, Germany lost a lot of German land east of the Oder-Neiße line, and for 45 years, Germany was split into West Germany and East Germany.

In 1989 there was a process of reforms in East Germany, which lead to the opening of the Berlin Wall and to the end of socialist rule in Germany. This events are known as the Wende or the Friedliche Revolution (Peaceful Revolution) in Germany. After that, East Germany joined West Germany in 1990.^[8] The new Germany is a part of the European Union.^[9]

[change] Politics

Main article: Politics of Germany

President Horst Köhler.

The Reichstag in Berlin is the site of the German parliament.

Germany is a constitutional federal democracy.^[10] Its political rules come from the 'constitution' called Grundgesetz (Basic Law), written by West Germany in 1949. It has a parliamentary system, and the parliament elects the head of government, the Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor). The current Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel, is a woman who used to live in East Germany.^[11]

The people of Germany vote for the parliament, called the Bundestag (Federal Assembly), every four years.^[12] Government members of the 16 Bundesländer work in the Bundesrat (Federal Council). The Bundesrat can help make some laws.^[13]

Main office holders
Office	Name	Party	Since
President	Horst Köhler	--- ¹⁾	1 July 2004
Chancellor	Angela Merkel	CDU	22 November 2005
Other government parties		FDP, CSU

The head of state is the Bundespräsident (Federal President). This person has no real powers but can order elections for the Bundestag. The current President is Horst Köhler.^[14]

The judiciary branch (the part of German politics that deals with courts) has a Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court). It can stop any act by the law-makers or other leaders if they feel they go against Germany's constitution.

[change] Geography

Topographic map

Germany is one of the largest countries in Europe. It stretches from the North Sea and Baltic Sea in the north to the high mountains of the Alps The highest point is the Zugspitze on the Austrian border, at 2,962 metres (9,717.8 feet).^[13]

Germany's northern part is very low and flat (lowest point: Neuendorf-Sachsenbande at -3.54 metres (-11.6 feet)). In the middle, there are low mountain ranges covered in large forests. Between these and the Alps, there is another plain created by glaciers during the ice ages.

Germany also contains parts of Europe's longest rivers, such as the Rhine (which makes up a part of Germany's western border), the Danube and the Elbe.^[13]

[change] States

Main article: States of Germany

Map of Germany

In Germany there are sixteen Bundesländer (singular Bundesland), or states:

State	Capital	Area (km²)	Population
Baden-Württemberg	Stuttgart	35,752	10,717,000
Bavaria	Munich	70,549	12,444,000
Berlin	Berlin	892	3,400,000
Brandenburg	Potsdam	29,477	2,568,000
Bremen	Bremen	404	663,000
Hamburg	Hamburg	755	1,735,000
Hesse	Wiesbaden	21,115	6,098,000
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern	Schwerin	23,174	1,720,000
Lower Saxony	Hanover	47,618	8,001,000
North Rhine-Westphalia	Düsseldorf	34,043	18,075,000
Rhineland-Palatinate	Mainz	19,847	4,061,000
Saarland	Saarbrücken	2,569	1,056,000
Saxony	Dresden	18,416	4,296,000
Saxony-Anhalt	Magdeburg	20,445	2,494,000
Schleswig-Holstein	Kiel	15,763	2,829,000
Thuringia	Erfurt	16,172	2,355,000

In these states there are 301 Kreise (districts) and 114 independent cities.

[change] Economy

Germany has one of the world's largest technologically powerful economy. Bringing West and East Germany together and making their economy work is still taking a long time and costing a lot of money.^[15]

[change] People

Neuschwanstein Castle

There are at least seven million people from other countries living in Germany. Some have political asylum, some are guest workers (Gastarbeiter), and some are their families. A lot of people from poor or dangerous countries go to Germany for safety.

About 50,000 ethnic Danish people live in Schleswig-Holstein, in the north. About 60,000 Slavic people, Sorbs, live in Germany too, in Saxony and Brandenburg. About 12,000 people in Germany speak Frisian; this language is the closest living language to English. In northern Germany, people outside towns speak Low Saxon.

Many people have come to Germany from Turkey (about 1.9 million Kurds and Turks). Other small groups of people in Germany are Croats (0.2 million), Italians (0.6 million), Greeks (0.4 million), Russians, and Poles (0.3 million). There are also some ethnic Germans who lived in the old Soviet Union (1.7 million), Poland (0.7 million), and Romania (0.3 million). These people have German passports, so they are not counted as foreigners. A lot of these people do not speak German at home.^[13]

Christianity is the biggest religion; Protestants are 38% of the people (mostly in the north) and Catholics are 34% of Germans the people (mostly in the south).^[13] There are also many Muslims, while the other people (26.3%) are either not religious, or belong to smaller religious groups.^[13] In the eastern regions, the former territory of GDR (also known as DDR), only one fifth of the population is religious.

Germany has one of the world's highest levels of schooling, technology, and businesses. The number of young people who start going to universities is now more than three times as big as it was after the end of World War II, and the trade and technical schools of Germany are some of the best in the world. Germans each make about $25,000 a year, so Germany is a very middle class society. A large social welfare system gives people money when they are ill or cannot find a job, and other things the people need. Millions of Germans travel outside their country each year.

[change] Culture

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) , composer.

Blaues Pferd I, 1911 by Franz Marc (1880–1916).

In Germany were born many people important in culture: composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, and Wagner; poets such as Goethe, Schiller, Heine and Lessing or Brecht; philosophers including Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche; and scientists including Einstein, Born, Heisenberg and Planck. It was also where the Bauhaus movement started.

In the past, when people in Europe could not speak each other's languages, they used German. Today, many people still learn German in school as a foreign language; it is second after English. Many important people in history are thought of as "German", because they are at the heart of German culture, although they did not always live in Germany. Some of these people were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, and Copernicus.

[change] Religion

The Cologne Cathedral at the Rhine river is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Inside the Frauenkirche in Dresden.

Roman Catholicism was the biggest religion in Germany up to the 15th century, but a major religious change called the Reformation changed this. In 1517, Martin Luther said that the Catholic Church was greedy and that it used religion to make money. Because of what he said, European and world history changed, and Luther started Protestantism, which is as big as the Catholic religion in Germany today. The current Pope, Benedict XVI, was born in Germany.

Before World War II, about two-thirds of the German people were Protestant and one-thirds were Roman Catholic. In the north and northeast of Germany, there were a lot more Protestants than Catholics. About one percent were German Jews.

Germany's constitution says that all people can believe in any religion they want to, and that no one is allowed to step on another person's rights because of the person's religion.

Today, Germany has the fastest-growing group of Jewish people in the world. Many of them are in Berlin. Ten thousand Jews have moved to Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall; many came from countries that were in the Soviet Union. Schools teaching about the horrible things that happened when the Nazis were in power, as well as teaching against the ideas of the Nazis, has helped to make Germany very tolerant towards other people and cultures, and now many people move there from countries that may not be so tolerant.

Today, about two-thirds of the German people (more than 55 million people) belong to a Christian church, but most of them take no part in church life. About half of them are Protestants and about half are Roman Catholics. Most German Protestants are members of the Evangelical Church in Germany. About three million or 3.7% Muslims live in Germany.^[16]^[17]