Germany

Full name of country: Federal Republic of Germany

Region: Europe

Official language: German

Population: 84,119,100 (2024 est.)

Nationality: German(s) (noun), German (adjective)

Land area: 348,672 sq km (134,623 sq miles)

Water area: 8,350 sq km (3,224 sq miles)

Capital: Berlin

National anthem: "Das Lied der Deutschen" (Song of the Germans), by August Heinrich Hoffmann Von Fallersleben/Franz Joseph Haydn

National holiday: Unity Day, October 3 (1990)

Population growth: -0.12% (2024 est.)

Time zone: UTC +1

Flag: The German flag features three equally sized horizontal stripes of black, red, and yellow. The colors are significant in that they were featured on the flag of the Holy Roman Emperor in the fourteenth century that depicted a black eagle with a red beak and claws set against a yellow background.

Independence: January 18, 1871 (establishment of the German Empire); divided into four zones of occupation (UK, US, USSR, and France) in 1945 following World War II; Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) proclaimed on May 23, 1949 and included the former UK, US, and French zones; German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) proclaimed on October 7, 1949 and included the former USSR zone; West Germany and East Germany unified on October 3, 1990; all four powers formally relinquished rights on March 15, 1991; notable earlier dates: August 10, 843 (Eastern Francia established from the division of the Carolingian Empire); February 2, 962 (crowning of Otto I, recognized as the first Holy Roman Emperor)

Government type: federal parliamentary republic

Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal; age 16 for some state and municipal elections

Legal system: civil law system

Located in the heart of Europe, Germany has had a profound impact on the history and economy of the continent and the world. Formerly an aggressive military power, Germany today is a peaceful country with some of the highest levels of education, economic productivity, and technological development in the world.

Note: unless otherwise indicated, statistical data in this article is sourced from the CIA World Factbook, as cited in the bibliography.

People and Culture

Population: Germany is the second-most populous country in Europe, after Russia. The country is 77.8 percent urban, with numerous medium-sized cities (2023). The North Rhine–Westphalia concentration of cities has created the Ruhrstadt (Rurh City).

Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen are the most densely populated Länder or states. The least densely populated are Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg.

Ethnic Germans compose 85.4 percent of the population. Another 1.8 percent are Turkish, while Poles and Syrians account for about 1 percent each (2022 estimates). In addition, a small Danish population lives near the northern border.

German is the official language. Danish, Frisian, Sorbian, and Romani are official minority languages. There are also a number of regional languages, including Low German, which are recognized under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Approximately 24.8 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, 22.6 percent is Protestant, and 3.7 percent is Muslim. In addition, around 43.8 percent of the population is unaffiliated with any religion (2022 estimates).

Indigenous People: Ethnic Germans are the native people of Germany.

Education: Education is compulsory for children between the ages of six and fifteen (or sixteen in some Länder). This covers primary education for four to six years, and lower secondary school. In some Länder, school is in session six days a week.

After lower secondary school, a student must be enrolled in a full-time school, a full-time vocational school, or in a program of part-time school and part-time vocational training until age eighteen.

Students must take an exit exam in order to go on to higher education. The nation boasts numerous universities. The oldest university in Germany is Heidelberg University, founded in 1386. It has produced several Nobel Prize winners, including Bert Sakmann, who received the prize for medicine in 1991. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is a center of technological research. It was here that Heinrich Hertz developed radio technology and Ferdinand Redtenbacher founded the field of mechanical engineering.

Historically famous figures who have taught at German universities include Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, Robert Koch, Immanuel Kant, and Martin Luther.

Health Care: Germany's health expenditure amounted to 12.8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. There are an estimated 4.44 doctors for every one thousand people (2020 estimate). Germany ranked seventh on the 2022 United Nations Human Development Index (HDI).

Under Germany's health care system, workers make mandatory contributions to the health insurance fund up to a certain income level and then private insurance takes over. By early 2020, about 87 percent of Germans were covered by the national health fund, around 10.5 percent by private health insurance, and the remaining (police, soldiers, etc.) by free government care. Only a small number of Germans are uninsured.

Food: Breakfast in Germany is typically "continental" style, meaning bread (fresh from the bakery), with honey, jam, or Nutella (a spread made of nuts and chocolate). Workers often have a snack during mid-morning.

Stores in small towns often close between noon and one or two o'clock in the afternoon, and many Germans go home from work to eat lunch with their families. If the family eats together at lunch, it may be the main meal of the day. Common lunch foods include potatoes, vegetables, meat with gravy, and a dessert.

Dinner is often cold sausage and cheese, with maybe a sandwich and salad. If this is the only meal during which the family eats together, it will be the main meal, and it will be hot.

In addition to sausage and sauerkraut, traditional German cuisine celebrates bread, made with various flours and seeds. Pickled red cabbage with preserved sweet apple slices is a popular dish. Cheeses and air-cured prosciutto are also favorites. German beer comes in many varieties. Craft beers and kirschwasser (cherry-flavored schnapps) are popular drinks.

Restaurants of many kinds abound in Germany. Italian restaurants, Greek restaurants, Spanish tapas, and Japanese sushi bars are common. Turkish eateries include restaurants, cafés, delis, and coffee shops; Turkish kebab is a popular dish.

Traditional German desserts include Black Forest Cake—made with layers of chocolate cake, whipped cream, cherries, and topped with curls of chocolate—chocolate candy, and marzipan (almond paste candies shaped as fruits, animals, etc.). Good-luck symbols such as horseshoes, ladybugs, pigs, four-leaf clovers, and chimney sweeps are often stamped on candies.

Arts & Entertainment: Germany has led the world in track and field, tennis, cycling, and Formula One auto racing. Nearly every community offers a schwimmbad (swimming pool), and the Deutscher Sportbund (German Sports Federation) sponsors physical fitness programs.

Football (soccer) is the national sport, with thousands of amateur clubs and numerous professional teams playing heavily attended matches every week. The German national team had won the World Cup four times by 2024. Bayern Munich is one of the world's top football clubs.

Other popular sports include tennis, played professionally by such Germans as Boris Becker and Steffi Graf; skiing in the German Alps; winter sports such as luge, bobsledding, and figure skating; hiking in the mountains; and windsurfing and sailing on Germany's many lakes and rivers.

Germany boasts more than one hundred opera houses and professional orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Many of the yearly music festivals are held in honor of musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach (Thuringia, in March) and Richard Wagner (Bayreuth, July). Other festivals showcase a specific music genre, such as the Stuttgart (April) and Berlin (July) jazz festivals.

Famous German painters include Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach, and twentieth-century artists such as Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Josef Beuys, and Lionel Feininger. Numerous beautifully decorated buildings represent the eighteenth-century Baroque period. In the twentieth century, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe developed the modern Bauhaus style of architecture.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, is probably the most famous German writer. Other nineteenth-century writers include Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who collected folk tales, and poets Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Schiller.

Several German authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, including Thomas Mann, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass, in 1929, 1972, and 1999, respectively. Other prominent German authors include Erich Maria Remarque, Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, and Herta Müller.

Fasching (winter carnival) occurs just before Lent. Fall festivals include the Rhineland's Rhine in Flames, with fireworks displays from barges on the river. Oktoberfest, Munich's lager festival, is chaotic but extremely popular. However, some families prefer the Christmas fairs held in many places, including Berlin, Munich, Lübeck, Münster, Nuremberg, and Heidelberg,

Holidays: The Day of Unity, observed on October 3, commemorates the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.

Environment and Geography

Topography: About the size of the US state of Montana, Germany is situated in Central Europe. It is bounded on the west by the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France; on the north by Denmark; on the east by the Czech Republic and Poland; and on the south by Switzerland and Austria.

Helgoland, Germany's only large island, lies 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) offshore in the North Sea. There are also numerous small islands, including the Frisian Islands.

The northern part of the mainland is flat, the central and southern regions are hilly, and the southern border with Austria is formed by the German Alps. The highest point is the Zugspitze in the Alps, at 2,963 meters (9,721 feet). The lowest point is Neuendorf bei Wilster, at 3.54 meters (11.61 feet) below sea level in Schleswig-Holstein, on the border with Denmark.

The Danube, rising in the Black Forest and emptying into the Black Sea in Romania 2,848 kilometers (1,770 miles) away, is the second-longest river in Europe (the Volga is the longest). Canals link the Danube to the Main, the Oder, and the Rhine. The Danube, the Rhine-Main-Danube canal, and the Danube-Black Sea Canal constitute the Trans-Europe Waterway.

The Rhine, at 1,319 kilometers (820 miles), is much shorter than the Danube. It rises in southeast Switzerland, flows west to form part of the border with Germany, and then turns north through western Germany and the Netherlands to empty into the North Sea.

Other major rivers include the Elbe, which rises in the Czech Republic and flows north through Germany, emptying into the Baltic Sea at Cuxhaven, and the Oder, which rises in the Czech Republic, flows north through Poland, forms part of the northern German-Polish border, and empties into the Baltic Sea.

Der Bodensee, or Lake Constance, is formed where the Rhine descends from the Alps and broadens before continuing north. The lake is bordered by Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. With an area of 570 square kilometers (220 square miles), it is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Europe.

The Kiel Canal, nearly 100 kilometers (62 miles) long, is the world's busiest artificial waterway. The canal joins the North and Baltic seas.

Berlin is by far the largest city in Germany, with approximately 3.574 million people living in its metropolitan area (2023). Other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Frankfurt.

Natural Resources: Germany's major natural resources are iron, potash, lignite (brown coal), hard coal, and natural gas. The nation's intense industrialization led to serious pollution problems, including acid rain resulting from sulfur dioxide emissions, and raw sewage and industrial effluents flowing into the Baltic Sea from rivers in eastern Germany.

About one-quarter of the trees in the country have been damaged by acid rain. Water has been polluted by industrial waste, oil from ships, fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. In fact, agricultural waste is cited as the reason for the loss of hundreds of species of animals and many species of flowering plants. In the east, out-of-date sewage treatment facilities also contributed to water pollution.

Radioactive waste is another concern. Spent fuel rods were stored in an old salt mine at Morsleben in Saxony-Anhalt. Other underground sites were in the planning stages. Germany shut down eight nuclear reactors in 2011, and the government had planned to shut down the nation's three remaining reactors by the end of 2022. With a decrease in Germany's gas supply from Russia during the Russia-Ukraine war, however, Germany postponed the shutdown in October 2022 and kept its reactors running through April 2023.

Government-mandated intensive recycling has reduced the amount of solid waste, but it is still high. Waste is burned at several plants. The German government has also been making efforts to identify and protect nature preservation areas.

Plants & Animals: Like most of Europe, Germany has few remaining wild species of large mammals. The problem is especially bad in Germany because of its many roads and high noise pollution. To protect its remaining wildlife, Germany has instituted a vigorous program of protection.

One of the most innovative programs is the construction of "green bridges" over roadways. These structures, planted with grasses, shrubs, and trees, provide a safe way for animals to cross busy highways. In addition, amphibians are protected by the construction of culvert-like (but noise-reduced) underpasses. Roadside fences also provide protection for animals.

Climate: The northwestern coastal area has a marine climate, with warmer, moist air from the North Sea that brings warm summers and mild but cloudy winters. Most of Germany has a continental climate, with more variations in weather, but with generally warmer summers and colder winters. The Alpine region has a mountain climate, with lower temperatures and higher precipitation.

January is the coldest month, with an average temperature of 1.6 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit) in the north and –2 degrees Celsius (28 degrees Fahrenheit) in the south. In July, the northern temperature averages 16 to 18 degrees Celsius (61 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit) and the southern temperature averages 19.4 degrees Celsius (67 degrees Fahrenheit).

Economy

Reunification caused strains as the country tried to integrate the former East German and West German economies. The process took longer than expected, although the country has made a significant improvement in the standard of living in the east. According to the World Bank, Germany ranked highly in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, with US$4.46 trillion. Per capita GDP was estimated at US$52,745.8.

Industry: Germany is one of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of iron and steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery and electronics, ships, vehicles, and textiles.

Germany’s exports, which include machinery, vehicles and vehicle parts, chemicals, iron and steel products, and plastic products, added more than US$2.104 trillion to the economy in 2023.

Agriculture: Because of Germany's poor soil, agriculture accounts for less than 1 percent of the GDP (2017 estimate). Farms are small, and the principal crops are potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets, fruit, and cabbages. Cattle, pigs, poultry, and milk products are also important. Forestry and fisheries are also part of the agricultural production.

Tourism: Approximately 39.5 million international tourists visited Germany in 2019. The total contribution of travel and tourism accounted for 10.4 percent of GDP in 2019. However, in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, the number of tourist arrivals dropped to just 12.4 million arrivals. By 2023, tourism numbers had begun to return to pre-pandemic levels, with travel and tourism accounting for 9.1 percent of GDP that year, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

From May to October there is abundant sunshine, and popular tourist attractions include beer gardens, cafes, outdoor events, festivals, cycling, swimming, hiking, and beach and mountain resorts.

Other attractions include the Alps, especially the Zugspitze and the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen; the Thuringian Forest in central Germany, noted for good hiking; the Black Forest, with the spa of Baden-Baden; the wooded Harz Mountains, source of many legends and folktales; the many resorts of the Baltic coast; Lake Constance, a resort area and one of Germany's warmest spots; the Frisian Islands in the North Sea; cruises on the Rhine; and numerous historic cities from Wittenberg to Aachen, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Cologne.

Government

Germany is a federal parliamentary republic, founded in 1949. The Federal Republic of Germany (formerly West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (formerly East Germany) reunited in 1990. The country has universal adult suffrage for citizens eighteen and older.

While the president is titular chief of state, the chancellor is the actual head of the government. The president is indirectly elected to a five-year term by a Federal Convention, which includes the members of the Bundestag (lower chamber of parliament) and delegates indirectly elected by state parliaments. The chancellor is indirectly elected by absolute majority by the parliament and serves a four-year term.

The bicameral parliament consists of the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and Federal Diet (Bundestag). The Bundestag consists of at least two representatives for every electoral district in the country. If a party's elected representatives are more than its proportional representation, the party may receive more seats. The Bundesrat, the upper chamber, has sixty-nine seats; its members are appointed by each of the sixteen state governments.

The independent Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) and the Federal Court of Justice are the nation's highest courts.

Of the sixteen Länder (states), three—Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg—are cities.

Major German political parties include the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Christian Social Union (CSU), Alliance 90/Greens, the Alternative for Germany, the Christian Democratic Union, the Left, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Interesting Facts

• Because of its clean water and unpolluted, pollen-free air, the North Sea island of Helgoland is officially designated as a health resort.
• In 2015, it was reported that, for the first time, Germany had generated 85 percent of its electricity through renewable resources.
• In 2019, the World Economic Forum ranked Germany third in its list of competitive countries in travel and tourism.

Bibliography

"Tourism Data and Statistics." World Travel and Tourism Council, wttc.org/research/economic-impact/tourism-data-statistics-regions-countries. Accessed 30 July 2024.

"Germany." The World Bank, data.worldbank.org/country/germany. Accessed 30 July 2024.

"Germany." The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 24 July 2024, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/germany/. Accessed 30 July 2024.

"Germany." World Health Organization, www.who.int/countries/deu/en/. Accessed 8 July 2022.

"Human Development Insights." Human Development Reports, United Nations Development Programme, hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks. Accessed 30 July 2024.

"Nuclear Power in Germany." World Nuclear Association, Apr. 2023, world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023.