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GERMANY
The Federal Republic of Germany (German:
Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is one of the world's leading industrialized
countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to
the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to its east by
Poland and the Czech Republic, to the south by Austria and Switzerland and
to its west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.
History
The German language and the feeling of "Germanhood" go back more than a
thousand years, but the state now known as Germany was unified as a modern
nation-state only in 1871, when the German Empire, dominated by the Kingdom
of Prussia, was forged. This was the second German Reich, usually translated
as "empire", but also meaning "realm".
The first Reich – known for much of its
existence as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation – stemmed from a
division of the Carolingian Empire in 843, which was founded by Charlemagne
on December 25th, 800, and existed in varying forms until 1806. During these
almost thousand years, the Germans expanded their influence successfully
with help of the organization of the Catholic Church, Northern Crusades and
the Hanseatic League. In 1530, the attempt of Protestant Reformation of
Catholicism turned out to have failed, and a separate Protestant church was
acknowledged as new state religion in many states of Germany. This led to
inter-German strife, the Thirty Years War (1618) and finally the Peace of
Westphalia (1648), that resulted in a drastically enfeebled and politically
disunited Germany, unable to resist the stroke of the Napoleonic Wars,
during which the Reich was overrun and dissolved in 1806. After that, France
was for long perceived as Germany's arch-enemy. In the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870, Germany revenged, but also during World War I, the invasion of
France (1914) was a chief objective.
The lasting effect of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire came to be
the division between Austria, formerly the leading state of Germany, from
the more western and northern parts. Between 1815 and 1871 Germany consisted
of dozens of independent states, thirty-nine of which formed the German
Confederation (Deutscher Bund).
The second Reich, i.e. the German Empire, was proclaimed in Versailles on
January 18th, 1871, after the French defeat. This was mainly the result of
the efforts of Otto von Bismarck, Germany's most prominent statesman of the
19th century, among other things known for an anti-Catholic "Kulturkampf"
and for fighting Socialists with social reforms.
The Second Reich, often perceived as a Golden Age, ended with World War I;
and Germany's emperor was forced to abdicate. After a quenched revolution
the democratic Weimar Republic was established. Economic hardship due to
both harsh peace conditions and the world wide Great Depression contributed
to making the democracy unpopular: Anti-democratic parties, both right-wing
and left-wing, were increasingly supported by German opinion leaders and
voters. In extraordinary elections of July and November 1932, the anti-democratic
Nazis got 37,2% and 33,0% respectively. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler
was appointed Chancellor of Germany, and by the Enabling Act on March 23,
1933, a wide majority of the parliament effectively disbanded the
constitution of the Weimar Republic.
The Third Reich was that of the Nazis, which lasted 12 years, from 1933 to
1945. In 1934, Hitler affirmed total control of government, when he also
succeeded the President of Germany. His policy of annexing neighbouring
territories was one of several reasons that led to the outbreak of World War
II in Europe on September 1, 1939. Initially, Germany and her allies had
many military successes, and gained control over most of Europe's mainland.
After attacking the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, which meant a two-front
war for the Third Reich, the momentum in the war switched; which Hitler's
declaration of war on the United States (December 11, 1941) did nothing to
help. On 8 May 1945, Germany surrendered after the Red Army had occupied
Berlin where Hitler had committed suicide.
The war resulted in large losses of territory; ethnic cleansing of 15
million Germans from Eastern Germany; occupation and 45 years of division,
during which the remaining parts of the country were split up into West
Germany and East Germany. In 1949 during the Berlin Blockade, Western forces
airlifted food and supplies into the former capital that now in the wake of
the Cold War had become a Western exclave behind the Iron Curtain. The
people of West-Germany became increasingly pro-American, much due to the
strong German anti-communism. The American Marshall Plan for the
reconstruction of Europe after the War, and later the foundation of the
European Union, contributed. The reconstructed (West-) Germany once again
became one of the world's major economies. Democracy, human rights and anti-fascism
became fundamental values. The German Democratic Republic, by contrast,
became one of the most repressive of the socialist satellite states of the
Warsaw Pact. (The GDR was sometimes known as "East Germany" and in West
Germany officially referred to as Middle Germany; it is still referred to as
such by people who think that the historical Eastern German provinces
constitute rightfully parts of Germany.)
The increasingly tense relations between the Superpowers of the Cold War
influenced also Germany. Ultimately, on August 13th, 1961, East Germany
erected the Berlin Wall and reinforced the border to West Germany in order
to avoid all contacts and migration over the inter-German border. Willy
Brandt, West-Berlin's mayor 1957–1966 and West-Germany's Chancellor
1969–1974, attempted to soothe the tensions, but particularly his acceptance
of the loss of former Eastern Germany caused much controversy.
After the fall of Communism in Europe, Germany was reunited in 1990, not
without economic difficulty (costs till today: 1.5 trillion Euro). Berlin
once again became capital of Germany. Together with France, the new Germany
is playing the leading role in the European Union. Germany is at the
forefront of European states seeking to advance the creation of a more
unified and capable European political, defense and security apparatus. The
Chancellor recently also called for a permanent seat for Germany in the UN
Security Council.
Politics
Germany is a constitutional federal republic, whose political system is laid
out in the 1949 'constitution' called Grundgesetz (Basic Law). It has a
parliamentary system in which the head of government, the Bundeskanzler (Chancellor),
is elected by the parliament.
The parliament, called Bundestag (Federal Assembly), is elected every four
years by popular vote in a complex system combining direct and proportional
representation. The 16 Bundesländer are represented at the federal level in
the Bundesrat (Federal Council), which—depending on the subject matter—may
have a say in the legislative procedure. Lately, there has been much concern
about the Bundestag and the Bundesrat blocking each other, making effective
government very difficult.
The function of head of state is performed by the Bundespräsident (Federal
President), whose powers are mostly limited to ceremonial and representative
duties.
The judiciary branch includes a Constitutional Court called
Bundesverfassungsgericht, which may ultimately overturn all acts by the
legislature or administration if they are deemed unconstitutional; as well
as a Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), responsible for appeals
from lower state court. All lower courts are created by the Bundesländer.
Germany's social welfare system has deep roots to the early
industrialization, to the strong bonds between individual and state/society
that followed Reformation and later signified the Prussian revival after the
30 Years War and remain one of the aspects of the German society most
Germans are the most proud of. About 90% of the population is covered by a
mandatory health insurance. Like in the other Northern/Western European
countries with similar systems, a reform process of the Social security
system has been deemed necessary and is currently (as of 2004) a major theme
in the domestic politics.
States
Germany is divided into sixteen Bundesländer (singular Bundesland), or
federal states. It is further subdivided into 439 Kreise (districts an
cities (kreisfreie Städte)).
Geography
Germany stretches from the high mountains of the Alps (highest point: the
Zugspitze at 2,962 m) in the south to the shores of the North Sea and the
Baltic Sea in the north. In between are found the forested uplands of
central Germany and the low-lying lands of northern Germany (lowest point:
Neuendorfer/Wilstermarsch at -3.54 m), traversed by some of Europe's major
rivers such as the Rhine, Danube and Elbe.
The Federal Republic is bordered to the north by Denmark, to its east by
Poland and the Czech Republic, to the south by Austria and Switzerland and
to its west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The weather is sometimes unpredictable. In the middle of summer it could be
warm and sunny one day and then cold and rainy the next. However truly
extreme weather conditions, like severe droughts, tornados, destructive
hailstorms, severe frost or heat etc. are all extremely rare. There have
been two bad large-scale floodings in the last few years, but in the long
term those are also quite rare. Damaging earthquakes are unheard-of.
Economy
Germany possesses the world's third most technologically powerful economy
after the US and Japan and is part of the world's largest economy, the
European Union. While exports remain strong, the local market of the
basically capitalistic economy has started to show problems commonly blamed
on the generous social benefits. Unemployment has been a problem for several
decades, and is now usually considered a long-term, not just cyclical,
problem.
After the fall of Communism in Europe, Germany was reunited in 1990, not
without economic difficulty (costs till today: 1.5 trillion Euro). Together
with France, the new Germany is playing the leading role in the European
Union. The integration and upgrading of the eastern German economy remains a
costly long-term problem, with annual transfers from the west amounting to
roughly $100 billion without conditions in the East actually improving after
1997. Some economists argue that the transfers hurt more than they help
since they don't encourage the East to get out of the slump by its own
effort, while at the same time preventing dearly-needed infrastructure
investment and upkeep in the West. There are still almost no internationally
renowned companies headquartered in former East-Germany; most have only
established subsidiaries.
The recent adoption of the Euro and the general political and economic
integration of Europe including the eastward expansion of the European Union
are thought likely to bring major changes to the German economy in the early
21st century.
Demographics
Germany has many large cities but no very large ones, Berlin being a
borderline case; the population is thus much less centralized and oriented
towards a single large capital than in most other European countries. The
largest cities are Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main,
Dortmund and Essen. The largest multi-city metropolitan areas are the Ruhr
Area, the Rhein-Main Region and the Stuttgart Region.
Germany has about 7.3 million non-citizen residents, including refugees,
foreign workers (Gastarbeiter), and their dependents. About 2/3s of these
have been in the country for more than 8 years, 20% have been born in
Germany; both groups would qualify for citizenship after recent changes in
immigration law (2002 data). Germany is still a primary destination for
political and economic refugees from many developing countries, but the
number of asylum seekers has been dropping in recent years, reaching about
50,000 in 2003. A proper immigration law has been bounced back and forth
between the Bundestag and Bundesrat without much success for about five
years now, leaving immigration largely ad-hoc and German language classes
for immigrants poorly organized small-scale affairs.
An ethnic Danish minority of about 50,000 people lives in Schleswig, mostly
close to the Danish border, in the north; a small number of Slavic people
known as the Sorbs lives in the states of Saxony (about 40,000) and
Brandenburg (about 20.000). The Frisian language, considered the living
language closest to the English language, is mother tongue to about 12,000
speakers in Germany, the rest living in the Netherlands. In rural areas of
Northern Germany Low Saxon is widely spoken.
Immigration has created a sizable minority from Turkey (about 1.9 million
Kurds and Turks), and other smaller minorities including Italians (0.6
million), Serbs (0.6 million), Greeks (0.4 million), Poles (0.3 million) and
Croats (0.2 million) (figures from year 2002). Anti-immigrant sentiments are
chiefly directed against the largest group of Muslims from Turkey, which is
perceived as less integrated in the German society than the smaller
immigrated minorities.
There are also a large number of ethnic German immigrants from the former
Soviet Union area (1.7 million), Poland (0.7 million) and Romania (0.3
million) (1980–1999 totals), who are automatically granted German
citizenship, and thus do not show up in foreign resident statistics; unlike
the foreigners they have been settled by the government almost evenly spread
throughout Germany. Many of them speak the languages of their former
resident countries at home.
Even with the mentioned difficulties, Germany still has one of the world's
highest levels of education, technological development, and economic
productivity. Since the end of World War II, the number of youths entering
universities has more than tripled, but university attendance still lags
behind many other European nations. In the annual league of top-ranking
universities compiled by Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2004, Germany came
4th overall, but with only 7 universities in the top 100 (USA: 51). The
highest ranking university, at no. 45, was the TU Munich. With a per capita
income level of about $25,000, Germany is a broadly middle class society. A
generous social welfare system provides for universal (but not
government-run) medical care, unemployment compensation, and other social
needs. As of 2004, economic pressure is forcing Germany to cut down on
social welfare and more limitations are expected in the future.
Germans also are mobile; millions travel abroad each year, most of their
favourite destinations being at the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.
According to the regular travel study of the Dresdner Bank Germans have
spent 52.5 Billion Euro for traveling abroad in 2003 and are expected to
spend 55 Billion Euro in 2004.
Culture
Germany's contributions to the world's cultural heritage are numerous, and
the country is often known as das Land der Dichter und Denker (The Land of
Poets and Thinkers). Germany was the birthplace of composers such as
Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Schumann and Wagner; poets such as Goethe and
Schiller as well as Heine; philosophers including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Kant, Hegel, Marx, Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger,
theologians like Luther, authors including Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann,
Heinrich Böll and Grass; scientists including Johannes Kepler, Ernst
Haeckel, Einstein, Born, Planck, Heisenberg, Hertz and Bunsen; and inventors
and engineers such as Gutenberg, Otto, Werner von Siemens, Wernher von
Braun, Daimler, Benz, Diesel and Linde. There are also numerous fine artists
from Germany such as the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, the surrealist
Max Ernst, the expressionist Franz Marc, the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys
or the neo expressionist Georg Baselitz.
The German language was once the lingua franca of central, eastern and
northern Europe, and remains one of the most popular foreign languages
taught worldwide, in Europe the second most popular after English. Many
important historical figures, though not citizens of Germany in the modern
sense, were nevertheless seen as Germans in the sense that they were
immersed in the German culture, for example Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz
Kafka and Stefan Zweig.
Since about 1970 Germany has once again had a thriving popular culture, now
increasingly being led by its new old capital Berlin and the city of
Hamburg, and a self-confident music and art culture. Germany is also well
known for its many opera houses.
Religion
The Grundgesetz, Germany's constitution, guarantees freedom of faith and
religion. It also states that no one may be discriminated against due to
their faith or religious opinions. However, unlike some other countries, it
is entirely in keeping with the German constitution for larger religions to
receive some preferential treatment, for example being able to teach
religion to adherents' children in public schools and having membership fees
collected by the German Finanzamt (equivalent to the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service). There have been numerous discussions of allowing other religious
groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims into this system as well. The
Muslim's efforts were hampered by the public adversity and also by the
Muslims' own disorganized state with many small rivaling organizations and
no central leadership, which do not fit well into a legal frame that was
originally created with well-organized, large Christian churches in mind.
Christianity is the major religion, with Protestants (particularly in the
north and east) comprising 33% of the population and Catholics (particularly
in the south and west) also 33%. In total more than 55 million people,
officially belong to a Christian denomination, although most of them take no
part in church life except at such events as weddings and funerals. Most
German Protestants are members of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
Independent and congregational churches exist in all larger towns and many
smaller ones, but most such churches are small.
Roman Catholicism was Germany's top religion in the 15th century, but the
religious movement commonly known as the Reformation changed this
drastically. In 1517 Martin Luther challenged this religion as he saw it as
a commercialisation of his faith. Through this, he altered the course of
European and world history and established Protestantism, the largest
denomination in Germany today.
Before World War II, about two-thirds of the German population was
Protestant and one-third was Roman Catholic. In the north and northeast of
Germany especially, Protestants dominated. In the separated West Germany
between 1945 and 1990, Catholics had a small majority.
In the former East Germany, there is much less religious feeling — probably
the result of forty years of Communism — than in the West. The average
church attendance is one of the lowest in the World, with only 5% attending
at least once per week, compared to 14% in the West according to a recent
study. The number of people who attend church for christenings, weddings and
funerals is also lower than in the West.
About 30% of the population are officially religiously unaffiliated. In the
East this number is also considerably higher.
Approximately 3.7 million Muslims (mostly of Turkish descent) live in
Germany. Lately there have been heated discussions about the question if
Muslim women working in public service, such as schoolteachers, should be
allowed to wear headscarves to work or not.
Besides this there are a few hundred thousand Orthodox Christians, 400,000
New Apostolic Christians, numerous other small groups, and 160,000 Jews, of
which around 100,000 belong to a synagogue.
Today Germany, especially its capital Berlin, has the fastest growing Jewish
community worldwide. Some ten thousands of Jews from the former Eastern
Bloc, mostly from ex-Soviet Union countries, settled in Germany since the
fall of the Berlin wall. This is mainly due to a German government policy
which basically grants an immigration ticket to anyone from the CIS and the
Baltic states with Jewish heritage, and the fact that today's Germans are
seen as significantly more accepting of Jews than many people in the
ex-Soviet realm. Some of the about 60,000 long-time resident German Jews
have expressed some mixed feelings about this immigration that they perceive
as making them a minority not only in their own country but also in their
own community; but largely the integration seems to work out. Prior to
Nazism, about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany, most of them long-time resident
families.
In the mid-1990s there was a moral panic about Scientology in Germany, which
was largely perceived as planing to infiltrate the top tiers of society,
with an exaggerated picture of the number and influence of its adepts being
reported by the press but also by Scientology groups themselves. The
discussion became a transatlantic affair when Scientology managed to rally
US politicians and Hollywood artists behind them. The affair peaked in 1997
when 34 Hollywood artists including Dustin Hoffman, Goldie Hawn, and Oliver
Stone, published an open letter in the International Herald Tribune on the
9th of January 1997, and in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the 18th
of January. In this letter they accused Germany of being after Scientology
members like the Nazis being after Jews. This certainly didn't help the
case. As of 2004, the scare has pretty much turned into a non-topic, with
the German inland intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) assuming less
than 10,000 followers in the country.
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