Germany, German Bundesrepublik Deutschland, officially Federal Republic of Germany, republic (137,818 sq mi/357,039 sq km; 1994 population 80,150,000; 2004 estimated population 82,424,609), central Europe; (cap.) Berlin; between 47°16'N 05°54'E and 55°04'N 15°02'E.
Geography, Transportation, and Agriculture
It borders the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France on the W, Switzerland and Austria on the S, the Czech Republic and Poland on the E, Denmark on the N, and the Baltic Sea on the NE. Separated into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, W. Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) after World War II, the country was formally reunited in October 1990. The country is divided into sixteen states (German, Länder): Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, North Rhine–Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony, Thuringia, and Berlin. Germany as a whole can be divided into three major geographic regions: the N German plain, the central German uplands, and in the S, the ranges of the Central Alps and other uplands. The climate is temperate maritime in the W and S, and humid continental in the E and central regions. The mean annual temperature is 48°F/9°C; average rainfall is 27 in/69 cm; the warmest region is upper Rhine plain. Almost two-thirds of the country’s extensive forests are coniferous; among the broadleafs, beech predominates. N Germany, drained by the Weser and Elbe rivers, is heavily farmed, despite poor soil. The region also includes the major industrial and transportation centers of Kiel, Hamburg, Bremen, and Hanover.
The Rhine River runs through Germany. Along the N rim of the Rhenish Slate Mountains lies Germany’s chief mining and industrial region, which includes the Ruhr and Saar basins and takes in such industrial centers as Bochum, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Krefeld, and Wuppertal. The S section of the Rhineland, which contains the Eifel and Hunsrück regions, is largely agricultural and has famous vineyards.
The S part of Germany extends roughly from the Rhine in the W to the Bohemian Forest in the E, and from the Rhine, Lake Constance, and the Bavarian Alps in the S to the central German highlands in the N. The region is drained by the Danube, Iller, Lech, Isar, Inn, Neckar, and Main rivers. Rising to the Zugspitze (9,721 ft/2,963 m) in the Bavarian Alps, the highest point in Germany, it consists of plateaus of recent geological origin that descend gradually toward the narrow valley of the Danube, and forested mountains., e.g., the Black Forest and the highlands of Swabia. Notable agricultural products of the region are fruit, wheat, barley, and dairy goods. Important industrial centers include Augsburg, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Munich, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart. Overall, the principal German agricultural products are milk and eggs, potatoes, sugar beets, wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Dairy cattle are widely raised, especially in Schleswig-Holstein; other livestock include hogs and poultry.
The territory of the former East Germany is largely made up of the low-lying N German plains and is drained on the W by the Elbe Rover, and by the Oder, which, with its tributary the Neisse, forms most of the E boundary. Major cities in the E include Berlin, Chemnitz, Dresden, Erfurt, Halle, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and Rostock. Major industrial centers are located along and near the Elbe River and its tributaries. Major agricultural commodities from the E region include wheat, rye, barley, and potatoes; livestock products include pork, beef, chicken, and milk.
Germany has a well-developed and integrated multimodal transport system. Railroad passenger and freight traffic remains important, but the relative importance of road-based traffic has grown rapidly in recent decades. There are major E-W routeways on the northern plains; the Rhine corridor is an especially important N-S routeway.
Population
Almost all citizens of the former W. Germany are Christians, about equally divided between Protestant and Roman Catholics, with the Protestants concentrated in the N part and the Catholics in the W and S. About 50% of the former East German citizens are Protestant, 9% Roman Catholic, and the rest are of undeclared religious affiliation. Virtually all citizens of the country speak German. Since the early 1970s, millions of “guest workers” from other countries (mostly former Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Italy) have come to Germany for employment. These residents include several million Muslims.
Economy
Germany faces the economic challenge of transforming the former East Germany from a deteriorating command economy to a market economy. Due in part to foreign aid, West Germany recovered relatively quickly from the massive destruction of World War II. Manufacturing and service industries are the dominant economic activities; agriculture accounts for 1% of the GNP. Manufacture includes transportation equipment, machinery, fabricated metal products, and chemicals. In 1989, Germany was the third largest motor vehicle producer in the world. Germany is one of the world’s largest exporters; it conducts over 50% of its trade with other EU members. In 2003, the estimated per capita GDP was approximately $27,600. East Germany’s economy, dependent on heavy industrial products too low grade to compete in the global marketplace, declined drastically with reunification. Industrial production decreased 50% from 1990 to 1991, largely because of the slump in domestic demand for the lower-quality goods in former East Germany and because of the difficulties in the ongoing economic restructuring. Major industries in the E include metalworking, chemical production, shipbuilding, and machinery manufacturing. The region is one of the world’s leading producers of lignite, but is otherwise resource poor.
History to Thirty Years War
A unified Germany did not exist prior to emergence of the German Empire in 1871. The area it now encompasses has historically been divided into kingdoms, principalities, duchies, etc. linked by fluctuating allegiances. (See Anhalt, Baden, Bavaria, Brunswick, Hesse, Lippe, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Prussia, Saxony, Schaumburg-Lippe, Thuringia, Württemberg, and on the free cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck). Occupied first by Celts; later by Romans (W of the Elbe) and various German tribes (E of the Rhine and N of the Danube). The Franks, united first by Clovis I and ruled most notably by Charlemagne, were dominant until the ascendancy of feudal states when the dukes of Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, and Saxony emerged as the most powerful magnates of Germany. The advent of the Holy Roman Empire (962) curbed, but never fully arrested, the movement toward localization of power. The imperial office, based on German kingship, became increasingly superficial. The inception of the Hanseatic and the Swabian leagues consolidated the interests of the prosperous and largely independent cities; differences between emperors and princes were exacerbated by the Reformation.
History: Thirty Years War to 1862
Religious and political tensions culminated in the Thirty Years War, which was a crushing setback to the cause of German unity. The chief theater of the war, Germany was reduced to misery and starvation, lost a large part of its population and became, as a result of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) a loose confederation of petty principalities under the nominal suzerainty of the emperor. The most powerful German state to emerge from the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries was Prussia. The French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon I brought the demise (1806) of the moribund Holy Roman Empire and also forced the German states, notably Prussia, to accept social, political, and administrative reforms. By the Congress of Vienna the German map was redrawn in 1814–1815, eliminating many petty states and expanding Prussia and Bavaria. The German states were loosely linked in the German Confederation, set up by the congress. German nationalism, linked with liberalism, emerged in the Revolutions of 1848; however, the revolutionists were soon defeated.
History: 1862 to 1919
Otto von Bismarck, who in 1862 took charge of Prussian policy, resolved on the course of creating a “Little Germany” (i.e. a Germany without Austria) under Prussian leadership. In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia triumphed over its rival, and Austria was excluded from the newly created North German Confederation. As a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 Bismarck attained his goal: William I of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor by the assembled German princes (1871). The peace treaty with France awarded Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. The Industrial Revolution transformed the country into Europe’s foremost manufacturing nation and also accelerated the pace of urbanization. By the mid-1880s, Germans had acquired some African territories, but it was only under William II that German colonial expansion began to collide seriously with British and French interests. The Triple Entente (France, Russia, and England) faced Germany and its allies in World War I (1914–1918). Exhausted to the point of collapse but with no enemy troops on its soil, Germany was obliged to accept the Allied armistice terms (November 1918) and, in 1919, the severe terms of Versailles.
History: 1919 to 1939
At Versailles, Germany lost all of her colonial possessions, Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, and W. Prussia (including Poznan and Danzig) and parts of Upper Silesia were given to Poland. Plebiscites provided for in the peace terms resulted in the transfer of Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet to Belgium, and of N Schleswig to Denmark. The Saar was placed under French administration for fifteen years; Germany was demilitarized and the Rhineland occupied by Allied forces. The first few years of the newly formed federal Weimar Republic were marked by internal political unrest, mass unemployment, and extreme currency inflation. Among the political parties, the extremes soon became dominant, with the chauvinist elements merged in Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) party. A semblance of normalcy returned in the mid-1920s, when Allied reparation demands were eased and the republic joined (1926) the League of Nations. The economic disaster of 1929 paved the way for the National Socialists to gain power in 1933. Intensive remilitarization (despite Versailles restrictions), a morally outrageous internal policy (most notably the extermination of political opponents real and contrived, such as the Jews), and an aggressive foreign policy (formation of the Axis powers, annexation of Austria, the Sudentenland, and Memel, creation of protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia) inevitably led toward war, the outbreak of which was precipitated by the invasion (September 1, 1939) of Poland.
History: 1939 to 1949
The fortunes of war turned against the victorious German army in 1943; by the spring of 1945 nearly all Germany was occupied by Allied troops and most major cities lay in ruins. By the end of the war, six million Jews had been killed and twenty million Russians. Hitler was dead by April 1945, and on May 7th and 8th the German government signed an unconditional surrender. The agreements of the Yalta Conference (February 1945) were implemented at the Potsdam Conference (July-Augugust 1945). A line formed mostly by the Oder and Neisse rivers was made the E boundary of Germany, as East Prussia and Upper and Lower Silesia were placed under Polish administration (except the N section of East Prussia, which was awarded to the USSR). In the W, the Saarland was occupied by French military forces. What remained of Germany was divided into four zones, occupied separately by the armies of Great Britain, France, the U. S., and the USSR. Berlin, similarly divided although situated well within the Soviet zone, was made the seat of the four-power Allied Control Council, authorized to take economic and administrative measures for Germany as a whole. However, the council failed to agree on how to implement the often imprecise Potsdam decisions, and separate governments were soon established in each of the four zones.
History of East Germany: 1949 to 1954
In 1949, Germany was divided into two states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The precise legal status of Berlin especially remained unclear. E. Germany (41,610 sq mi/107,771 sq km) was bordered by Czechoslovakia in the S, West Germany in the S and W, the Baltic Sea in the N, and Poland in the E; (cap.) was East Berlin. Other major cities included Leipzig, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt (now known as Chemnitz, its original name), Magdeburg, Halle, Rostock, and Erfurt. A congress organized by the Socialist Unity party (SED) in May 1949 adopted a constitution establishing the GDR. Initially, East Germany was divided into five states, but in 1952 it was split into fifteen districts (Bezirke). In 1950, a treaty was signed with Poland recognizing the Oder-Neisse line as East Germany’s permanent E boundary. In 1952, a 3-mi/4.8-km-wide zone, guarded by police, was established along the border with West Germany (but not with West Berlin) in order to reduce emigration to the West.
History: East Germany: 1954 to Reunionification
In 1954, the USSR recognized the sovereignty of East Germany, which in 1955 became a charter member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. East German armed forces were established in 1956; Soviet troops, however, remained stationed in the country. In order to reduce the large flow of persons leaving East Germany (about four million during 1945–1961), many of whom crossed from East to West Berlin, a wall was erected (August, 12–13, 1961) between the two parts of the city; it was later reinforced and enlarged. In 1964, a treaty of friendship and cooperation, in effect a peace treaty, was signed with the USSR; similar treaties with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria followed in 1967. In the late 1960s, diplomatic contacts with West Germany were initiated; these culminated in 1973 with the signing of a treaty between the two states. At the same time, East Germany was accorded diplomatic recognition by a number of non-Communist countries, including the U.S. (1974). After being granted permanent observer status in 1972, East Germany was made a full member of the UN in 1973. In the 1970s, trade between the Germanys increased, spurred by large-scale West German credits. Travel restrictions were eased so that West Germans could visit the East, and later, in the 1980s, East Germans were allowed to travel to West Germany. In the latter half of the 1980s, tensions developed with Moscow as the hard-line SED reacted coolly to the reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
History of West Germany: 1949 to 1955
West Germany (95,742 sq mi/247,973 sq km), was bordered by Austria and Switzerland in the S, by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands in the W, by the North Sea and Denmark in the N, by the Baltic Sea in the NE, and by East Germany and Czechoslovakia in the E. Bonn was the seat of government and de facto capital, while Berlin was regarded as the proper capital. The country was divided into ten states, all in the U.S., British, and French occupation zones, that adopted a constitution in May 1949 to establish the Federal Republic of Germany. The new republic was similar in structure to the Weimar Republic, except that the individual states had somewhat more power, and the president’s powers were much reduced. The occupying powers allowed West Germany considerable autonomy from the start, and in 1951, West Germany was given the right to conduct its own foreign relations. The following year West Germany, the U.S., France, and Great Britain signed the Bonn Convention, which granted West Germany most of the attributes of national sovereignty. The Paris agreements of 1954, which came into force in 1955, gave West Germany full independence, except that the former occupying powers maintained a military presence and reserved the right to negotiate with the USSR on matters relating to Berlin and to Germany as a whole.
History of West Germany: 1955 to Reunionification
In 1955, West Germany was recognized as an independent country by numerous nations, including the USSR, and it became a member of the NATO. During the 1950s, the West German economy grew dramatically; in 1958, the country became a charter member of the European Common Market. In 1957, the Saarland was assigned to West Germany by France, after a plebiscite. Though there was considerable trade between them, the two Germanys had virtually no contact on an official level until the 1970s. During the early years of that decade, W. Germany was governed by a policy to try to improve relations with East Europe termed Ostpolitik (=eastern policy). Important milestones of Ostpolitik included the signing (1972) of an agreement among the four former occupying powers improving access to West Berlin and permitting West Berliners to visit East Berlin and East Germany more often; and a treaty (1973) between East and West Germany that called for increased cooperation between the two states and prepared the groundwork for the establishment of full diplomatic relations. West Germany was admitted to the UN in 1973, after having held permanent observer status since 1953.
History: Reunification to 1991
Although German reunification was seen as a principal goal in West Germany’s relations with East Germany, it seemed a remote possibility until the dramatic political upheavals that took place in East Germany in late 1989 and 1990. In the latter half of 1989, thousands of East German citizens emigrated illegally to West Germany via Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary. A tide of protest ensued, which resulted in the rapid erosion of the SED’s political framework. In November 1989, border crossings to West Germany were opened and the East German government began to dismantle the Berlin Wall. The same month West German chancellor Helmut Kohl presented a ten-point unification plan to the Bundestag, which overwhelmingly approved it. The first free elections in East Germany were held on March 19, 1990, with the participation of more than 90% of the electorate, and the way to unification seemed clear. In May, the legislative bodies of East and West Germany signed the Treaty between the FRG and GDR Establishing a Monetary, Economic, and Social Union , which took effect on July 1. In mid-July, Kohl and Gorbachev agreed that the USSR would withdraw its forces from East German soil within the next four years, and that the united Germany would reduce its armed force strength to 370,000 within the same period. Also in July, East Germany reestablished the five states (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, and Thuringia), in place of the fourteen districts. In August, East and West Berlin were joined to form the state of Berlin. On October 3, the two German states were formally unified, and it was officially declared that the united Germany would be a full member of NATO. In November 1990, Germany signed a treaty with Poland recognizing Poland’s W boundary and renouncing German claims on territory lost because of World War II. The first all-German elections since 1933 were held on December 2, 1990.
History: 1991 to Present
In June 1991, the Bundestag voted in favor of Berlin as the seat of government; in July, however, the Bundesrat decided to retain its place in Bonn. In December it was decided that eight of eighteen federal ministries would remain in Bonn. Despite problems related to reunification, Germany has retained its dominant economic position in the European Community, where it has used its financial policies to fight inflation and high interest rates.
Government
Each of Germany's sixteen states has its own constitution, legislature, and government, which can pass laws on all matters except those that are the exclusive right of the federal government, such as defense, foreign affairs, and finance. Education, local law enforcement, culture, and environmental protection are controlled by the states. Germany has a parliamentary democracy with a bicameral legislature. The Bundesrat, the upper house, has sixty-eight seats, with each state seating three–six representatives, depending on the state’s population. The Bundestag, the lower house, is the country’s main legislative body, with 662 deputies who are elected to four-year terms using a mixed system of proportional representation and direct voting. Executive authority lies with the federal government, whose leader, the federal chancellor, is elected by an absolute majority of the Bundestag. The chancellor appoints the other ministers of the cabinet. The federal president is a constitutional head of state with little influence on government but with considerable moral authority as a spokesperson in German society. The current President is Horst Koehler, elected in 2004. Chancellor Angela Merkel is current head of government, a coalition between her Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Socialist Union; the Christian Democrats won a close election in September 2005 to unseat Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who had held the post since 1998.
