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Travel to Germany — Unbiased reviews and
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Germany
Federal Republic of Germany National name: Bundesrepublik
Deutschland President: Horst
Köhler (2004) Chancellor:
Angela Merkel (2005)
Current government officials
Land area: 135,236 sq mi (350,261 sq km);
total area: 137,846 sq mi (357,021 sq km) Population (2008 est.): 82,369,548 (growth
rate: 0.0%); birth rate: 8.1/1000; infant mortality rate: 4.0/1000;
life expectancy: 79.1; density per sq km: 235
Capital and largest city (2003 est.):
Berlin (capital since Oct. 3, 1990), 3,933,300
(metro. area), 3,274,500 (city proper) Other large cities: Hamburg, 1,686,100;
Munich, 1,185,400; Cologne, 965,300; Frankfurt, 648,000; Essen,
588,800; Dortmund, 587,600; Stuttgart, 581,100; Düsseldorf,
568,900; Bremen, 527,900; Hanover, 516,300; Duisburg, 513,400 Monetary unit: Euro (formerly Deutsche
mark)
Language:
German
Ethnicity/race:
German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, Italian 0.7%, Greek
0.4%, Polish 0.4%, other 4.6%
Religions:
Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Islam 4%,
Unaffiliated or other 28%
National Holiday:
Unity Day, October 3 Literacy rate: 99% (2003 est.) Economic summary GDP/PPP (2007 est.):
$2.81 trillion; per capita $34,200. Real growth rate: 2.5%.
Inflation: 2.3%. Unemployment: 8.4%. Arable land:
34%. Agriculture: potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets,
fruit, cabbages; cattle, pigs, poultry. Labor force: 43.63
million; industry 33.4%, agriculture 2.8%, services 63.8% (1999).
Industries: among the world's largest and most technologically
advanced producers of iron, steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery,
vehicles, machine tools, electronics, food and beverages,
shipbuilding, textiles. Natural resources: iron ore, coal,
potash, timber, lignite, uranium, copper, natural gas, salt, nickel,
arable land. Exports: $1.361 trillion f.o.b. (2007 est.):
machinery, vehicles, chemicals, metals and manufactures, foodstuffs,
textiles. Imports: $1.21 tillion f.o.b. (2007 est.): machinery,
vehicles, chemicals, foodstuffs, textiles, metals. Major trading
partners: France, U.S., UK, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria,
Spain, China (2006). Communications:
Telephones: main lines in use: 54.2 million (2006); mobile
cellular: 84.3 million (2006). Radio broadcast stations: AM 51,
FM 767, shortwave 4 (1998). Television broadcast stations: 373
(plus 8,042 repeaters) (1995). Internet hosts: 16.494 million
(2007). Internet users: 38.6 million (2006). Transportation: Railways: total: 48,215 km
(20,278 km electrified) (2006). Highways: total: 231,581 km;
paved: 231,581 km (including 12,200 km of expressways); unpaved: 0 km
(2002). Waterways: 7,467 km (2006); note: Rhine River carries
most goods; Main-Danube Canal links North Sea and Black Sea (2004).
Ports and harbors: Bremen, Bremerhaven, Brunsbuttel, Duisburg,
Frankfurt, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Mainz, Rostock, Wilhemshaven.
Airports: 550 (2006). International
disputes: none.
Major sources and definitions
Rulers of Germany and Prussia
The Berlin Wall (1961–1990)
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Geography
Located in central Europe, Germany is made up of
the North German Plain, the Central German Uplands (Mittelgebirge), and
the Southern German Highlands. The Bavarian plateau in the southwest
averages 1,600 ft (488 m) above sea level, but it reaches 9,721 ft (2,962
m) in the Zugspitze Mountains, the highest point in the country. Germany's
major rivers are the Danube, the Elbe, the Oder, the Weser, and the Rhine.
Germany is about the size of Montana.
Government
Federal republic.
History
The Celts are believed to have been the first
inhabitants of Germany. They were followed by German tribes at the end of
the 2nd century B.C. German invasions destroyed
the declining Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. One of the tribes, the Franks, attained
supremacy in western Europe under Charlemagne, who was crowned Holy Roman
Emperor in 800. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), Charlemagne's lands east of
the Rhine were ceded to the German Prince Louis. Additional territory
acquired by the Treaty of Mersen (870) gave Germany approximately the area
it maintained throughout the Middle Ages. For several centuries after Otto
the Great was crowned king in 936, German rulers were also usually heads
of the Holy Roman Empire.
By the 14th century, the Holy Roman Empire was
little more than a loose federation of the German princes who elected the
Holy Roman Emperor. In 1438, Albert of Hapsburg became emperor, and for
the next several centuries the Hapsburg line ruled the Holy Roman Empire
until its decline in 1806. Relations between state and church were changed
by the Reformation, which began with Martin Luther's 95 theses, and came
to a head in 1547, when Charles V scattered the forces of the Protestant
League at Mühlberg. The Counter-Reformation followed. A dispute over
the succession to the Bohemian throne brought on the Thirty Years' War
(1618–1648), which devastated Germany and left the empire divided
into hundreds of small principalities virtually independent of the
emperor.
Meanwhile, Prussia was developing into a state
of considerable strength. Frederick the Great (1740–1786)
reorganized the Prussian army and defeated Maria Theresa of Austria in a
struggle over Silesia. After the defeat of Napoléon at Waterloo
(1815), the struggle between Austria and Prussia for supremacy in Germany
continued, reaching its climax in the defeat of Austria in the Seven
Weeks' War (1866) and the formation of the Prussian-dominated North German
Confederation (1867). The architect of this new German unity was Otto von
Bismarck, a conservative, monarchist, and militaristic Prussian prime
minister. He unified all of Germany in a series of three wars against
Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870–1871). On Jan. 18,
1871, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall
of Mirrors at Versailles. The North German Confederation was abolished,
and the Second German Reich, consisting of the North and South German
states, was born. With a powerful army, an efficient bureaucracy, and a
loyal bourgeoisie, Chancellor Bismarck consolidated a powerful centralized
state.
Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in 1890 and
embarked upon a “New Course,” stressing an intensified
colonialism and a powerful navy. His chaotic foreign policy culminated in
the diplomatic isolation of Germany and the disastrous defeat in World War
I (1914–1918). The Second German Empire collapsed following the
defeat of the German armies in 1918, the naval mutiny at Kiel, and the
flight of the kaiser to the Netherlands. The Social Democrats, led by
Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann, crushed the Communists and
established a moderate state, known as the Weimar Republic, with Ebert as
president. President Ebert died on Feb. 28, 1925, and on April 26, Field
Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was elected president. The mass of Germans
regarded the Weimar Republic as a child of defeat, imposed on a Germany
whose legitimate aspirations to world leadership had been thwarted by a
worldwide conspiracy. Added to this were a crippling currency debacle, a
tremendous burden of reparations, and acute economic distress.
Adolf Hitler, an Austrian war veteran and a
fanatical nationalist, fanned discontent by promising a Greater Germany,
abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, restoration of Germany's lost
colonies, and the destruction of the Jews, whom he scapegoated as the
reason for Germany's downfall and depressed economy. When the Social
Democrats and the Communists refused to combine against the Nazi threat,
President von Hindenburg made Hitler the chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. With
the death of von Hindenburg on Aug. 2, 1934, Hitler repudiated the Treaty
of Versailles and began full-scale rearmament. In 1935, he withdrew
Germany from the League of Nations, and the next year he reoccupied the
Rhineland and signed the Anti-Comintern pact with Japan, at the same time
strengthening relations with Italy. Austria was annexed in March 1938. By
the Munich agreement in Sept. 1938, he gained the Czech Sudetenland, and
in violation of this agreement he completed the dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia in March 1939. His invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939,
precipitated World War II.
Hitler established death camps to carry out
“the final solution to the Jewish question.” By the end of the
war, Hitler's Holocaust had killed 6 million Jews, as well as Gypsies,
homosexuals, Communists, the handicapped, and others not fitting the Aryan
ideal. After some dazzling initial successes in 1939–1942, Germany
surrendered unconditionally to Allied and Soviet military commanders on
May 8, 1945. On June 5 the four-nation Allied Control Council became the
de facto government of Germany.
(For details of World War II and of the
Holocaust, see Headline History, World War II.)
At the Berlin (or Potsdam) Conference (July
17–Aug. 2, 1945) President Truman, Premier Stalin, and Prime
Minister Clement Attlee of Britain set forth the guiding principles of the
Allied Control Council: Germany's complete disarmament and
demilitarization, destruction of its war potential, rigid control of
industry, and decentralization of the political and economic structure.
Pending final determination of territorial questions at a peace
conference, the three victors agreed to the ultimate transfer of the city
of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and its adjacent area to the USSR and
to the administration by Poland of former German territories lying
generally east of the Oder-Neisse Line. For purposes of control, Germany
was divided into four national occupation zones.
The Western powers were unable to agree with the
USSR on any fundamental issues. Work of the Allied Control Council was
hamstrung by repeated Soviet vetoes; and finally, on March 20, 1948,
Russia walked out of the council. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain had
taken steps to merge their zones economically (Bizone); on May 31, 1948,
the U.S., Britain, France, and the Benelux countries agreed to set up a
German state comprising the three Western zones. The USSR reacted by
clamping a blockade on all ground communications between the Western zones
and West Berlin, an enclave in the Soviet zone. The Western allies
countered by organizing a gigantic airlift to fly supplies into the
beleaguered city. The USSR was finally forced to lift the blockade on May
12, 1949.
The Federal Republic of Germany was proclaimed
on May 23, 1949, with its capital at Bonn. In free elections, West German
voters gave a majority in the constituent assembly to the Christian
Democrats, with the Social Democrats largely making up the opposition.
Konrad Adenauer became chancellor, and Theodor Heuss of the Free Democrats
was elected the first president.
The East German states adopted a more
centralized constitution for the Democratic Republic of Germany, put into
effect on Oct. 7, 1949. The USSR thereupon dissolved its occupation zone
but Soviet troops remained. The Western allies declared that the East
German Republic was a Soviet creation undertaken without
self-determination and refused to recognize it. Soviet forces created a
state controlled by the secret police with a single party, the Socialist
Unity (Communist) Party.
Agreements in Paris in 1954 giving the Federal
Republic full independence and complete sovereignty came into force on May
5, 1955. Under the agreement, West Germany and Italy became members of the
Brussels treaty organization created in 1948 and renamed the Western
European Union. West Germany also became a member of NATO. In 1955, the
USSR recognized the Federal Republic. The Saar territory, under an
agreement between France and West Germany, held a plebiscite, and despite
economic links to France, elected to rejoin West Germany on Jan. 1,
1957.
The division between West Germany and East
Germany was intensified when the Communists erected the Berlin Wall in
1961. In 1968, the East German Communist leader, Walter Ulbricht, imposed
restrictions on West German movements into West Berlin. The Soviet-bloc
invasion of Czechoslovakia in Aug. 1968 added to the tension. West Germany
signed a treaty with Poland in 1970, renouncing force and setting Poland's
western border at the Oder-Neisse Line. It subsequently resumed formal
relations with Czechoslovakia in a pact that “voided” the
Munich treaty that gave Nazi Germany the Sudetenland. By 1973, normal
relations were established between East and West Germany and the two
states entered the United Nations.
West German chancellor Willy Brandt, winner of a
Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign policies, was forced to resign in 1974
when an East German spy was discovered to be one of his top staff members.
Succeeding him was a moderate Social Democrat, Helmut Schmidt. Schmidt
staunchly backed U.S. military strategy in Europe, staking his political
fate on placing U.S. nuclear missiles in Germany unless the Soviet Union
reduced its arsenal of intermediate missiles. He also strongly opposed
nuclear-freeze proposals.
Helmut Kohl of the Christian Democrat Party
became chancellor in 1982. An economic upswing in 1986 led to Kohl's
reelection. The fall of the Communist government in East Germany left only
Soviet objections to German reunification to be dealt with. On the night
of Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was dismantled, making reunification all
but inevitable. In July 1990, Kohl asked Soviet leader Gorbachev to drop
his objections in exchange for financial aid from (West) Germany.
Gorbachev agreed, and on Oct. 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic
acceded to the Federal Republic, and Germany became a united and sovereign
state for the first time since 1945.
A reunited Berlin serves as the official capital
of unified Germany, although the government continued to have
administrative functions in Bonn during the 12-year transition period. The
issues of the cost of reunification and the modernization of the former
East Germany were serious considerations facing the reunified nation.
In its most important election in decades, on
Sept. 27, 1998, Germans chose Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder as
chancellor over Christian Democrat incumbent Helmut Kohl, ending a
16-year-long rule that oversaw the reunification of Germany and symbolized
the end of the cold war in Europe. A centrist, Schröder campaigned
for “the new middle” and promised to rectify Germany's high
unemployment rate of 10.6%.
Tension between the old-style left-wing and the
more pro-business pragmatists within Schröder's government came to a
head with the abrupt resignation of finance minister Oskar Lafontaine in
March 1999, who was also chairman of the ruling Social Democratic Party.
Lafontaine's plans to raise taxes—already nearly the highest in the
world—on industry and on German wages went against the more centrist
policies of Schröder. Hans Eichel was chosen to become the next
finance minister.
Germany joined the other NATO allies in the
military conflict in Kosovo in 1999. Before the Kosovo crisis, Germans had
not participated in an armed conflict since World War II. Germany agreed
to take 40,000 Kosovar refugees, the most of any NATO country.
In Dec. 1999, former chancellor Helmut Kohl and
other high officials in the Christian Democrat Party (CDU) admitted
accepting tens of millions of dollars in illegal donations during the
1980s and 1990s. The enormity of the scandal led to the virtual
dismemberment of the CDU in early 2000, a party that had long been a
stable conservative force in German politics.
In July 2000, Schröder managed to pass
significant tax reforms that would lower the top income-tax rate from 51%
to 42% by 2005. He also eliminated the capital-gains tax on companies
selling shares in other companies, a measure that was expected to spur
mergers. In May 2001, the German parliament authorized the payment of $4.4
billion in compensation to 1.2 million surviving Nazi-era slave
laborers.
Schröder was narrowly reelected in Sept.
2002, defeating conservative businessman Edmund Stoiber. Schröder's
Social Democrats and coalition partner, the Greens, won a razor-thin
majority in parliament. Schröder's deft handling of Germany's
catastrophic floods in August and his tough stance against U.S. plans for
a preemptive attack on Iraq buoyed him in the weeks leading up to the
election. Germany's continued reluctance to support the U.S. call for
military action against Iraq severely strained its relations with
Washington.
Germany's recession continued in 2003: for the
previous three years, Europe's biggest economy had the lowest growth rate
among EU countries. In Aug. 2003, Schröder unfurled an ambitious
fiscal-reform package and called his proposal “the most significant
set of structural reforms in the social history of Germany.”
Schröder's reforms, however, did little to rejuvenate the economy and
angered many Germans, accustomed to their country's generous social
welfare programs. His reforms reduced national health insurance and cut
unemployment benefits at a time when unemployment had reached an alarming
12%.
National elections in Sept. 2005 ended in a
deadlock: the conservative CDU/CSU and its leader, Angela Merkel, received
35.2% and Gerhard Schröder's SPD garnered 34.3%. After weeks of
wrangling to form a governing coalition, the first left-right “grand
coalition” in Germany in 36 years was cobbled together, and on Nov.
22, Merkel became Germany's first female chancellor. During her first
year, Merkel showed strong leadership in international relations, but her
domestic economic reform agenda has stalled. Her first major initiative,
reforming the health care system, was widely viewed as ineffectual.
See also Encyclopedia: Germany. U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
Germany Federal Statistical Office http://www.destatis.de/e_home.htm .
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