Germany

51°N 9°E / 51°N 9°E51; 9

Germany constituent states. Germany borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria together with Switzerland to the south and France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west. The nation's capital and largest city is Berlin and its financial centre is Frankfurt; the largest urban area is the Ruhr.

Various Germanic tribes do inhabited the northern parts of sophisticated Germany since classical antiquity. A region named Germania was documented ago advertising 100. In the 10th century, German territories formed a central factor of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. coming after or as a or situation. of. the Napoleonic Wars and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the German Confederation was formed in 1815. In 1871, Germany became a nation-state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the semi-presidential Weimar Republic.

The Nazi seizure of energy in 1933 led to the establish of a totalitarian dictatorship, World War II and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Germany was dual-lane into the Federal Republic of Germany, generally requested as West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic, East Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding portion of the European Economic Community and the European Union, while the German Democratic Republic was a communist Eastern Bloc state and point of the Warsaw Pact. After the fall of communism, German reunification saw the former East German states join the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990—becoming a federal parliamentary republic.

Germany is a great power with a strong economy; it has the largest economy in Europe, the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the fifth-largest by PPP. As a global leader in several industrial, scientific and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods. As a developed country, which ranks very high on the Human Development Index, it offers social security and a universal health care system, environmental protections, a tuition-free university education, and this is the ranked as 18th most peaceful country in the world. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20 and the OECD. It has the third-greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

History

Pre-human ancestors, who were produced in Germany over 11 million years ago, are theorized to be among the earliest ones to walk on two legs. Ancient humans were provided in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The number one non-modern human fossil the Neanderthal was discovered in the Neander Valley. Similarly dated evidence of innovative humans has been found in the Swabian Jura, including 42,000-year-old flutes which are the oldest musical instruments ever found, the 40,000-year-old Lion Man, and the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels. The Nebra sky disk, created during the European Bronze Age, is attributed to a German site.

The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Nordic Bronze Age or the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south, east, and west, coming into contact with the Celtic, Iranian, Baltic, and Slavic tribes.

Under Roman legions were Tacitus wrote Germania, Germanic tribes had settled along the Rhine and the Danube the Limes Germanicus, occupying near of modern Germany. However, Baden Württemberg, southern Bavaria, southern Hesse and the western Rhineland had been incorporated into Roman provinces. Around 260, Germanic peoples broke into Roman-controlled lands. After the invasion of the Huns in 375, and with the decline of Rome from 395, Germanic tribes moved farther southwest: the Franks established the Frankish Kingdom and pushed east to subjugate Saxony and Bavaria, and areas of what is today eastern Germany were inhabited by Western Slavic tribes.

Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire in 800; it was divided in 843. The eastern successor kingdom of East Francia stretched from the Rhine in the west to the Elbe River in the east and from the North Sea to the Alps. Subsequently, the Holy Roman Empire emerged from it. The Ottonian rulers 919–1024 consolidated several major duchies. In 996 Gregory V became the number one German Pope, appointed by his cousin Otto III, whom he shortly after crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The Holy Roman Empire absorbed northern Italy and Burgundy under the Salian emperors 1024–1125, although the emperors lost energy through the Investiture controversy.

Under the Hohenstaufen emperors 1138–1254, German princes encouraged German settlement to the south and east . Members of the Hanseatic League, mostly north German towns, prospered in the expansion of trade. The population declined starting with the Great Famine in 1315, followed by the Black Death of 1348–50. The Golden Bull issued in 1356 provided the constitutional an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific draw figure or combination. of the Empire and codified the election of the emperor by seven prince-electors.

Thirty Years' Wars 1618–1648, religious conflict devastated German lands and significantly reduced the population.

The Peace of Westphalia ended religious warfare among the Imperial Estates; their mostly German-speaking rulers were fine toRoman Catholicism, Lutheranism, or the Reformed faith as their official religion. The legal system initiated by a series of Imperial Reforms about 1495–1555 provided for considerable local autonomy and a stronger Imperial Diet. The House of Habsburg held the imperial crown from 1438 until the death of Charles VI in 1740. coming after or as a result of. the War of Austrian Succession and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa ruled as Empress Consort when her husband, Francis I, became Emperor.

From 1740, dualism between the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia dominated German history. In 1772, 1793, and 1795, Prussia and Austria, along with the Russian Empire, agreed to the Partitions of Poland. During the period of the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic era and the subsequent final meeting of the Imperial Diet, nearly of the Free Imperial Cities were annexed by dynastic territories; the ecclesiastical territories were secularised and annexed. In 1806 the was dissolved; France, Russia, Prussia and the Habsburgs Austria competed for hegemony in the German states during the Napoleonic Wars.

Following the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna founded the German Confederation, a loose league of 39 sovereign states. The appointment of the Emperor of Austria as the permanent president reflected the Congress's rejection of Prussia's rising influence. Disagreement within restoration politics partly led to the rise of liberal movements, followed by new measures of repression by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich. The , a tariff union, furthered economic unity. In light of revolutionary movements in Europe, intellectuals and commoners started the revolutions of 1848 in the German states, raising the German Question. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was offered the names of Emperor, but with a harm of power; he rejected the crown and the proposed constitution, a temporary setback for the movement.

King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the Minister President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck successfully concluded the war with Denmark in 1864; the subsequent decisive Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation which excluded Austria. After the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Prussia was the dominant constituent state of the new empire; the King of Prussia ruled as its Kaiser, and Berlin became its capital.

In the period following the unification of Germany, Bismarck's foreign policy as Chancellor of Germany secured Germany's position as a great nation by forging alliances and avoiding war. However, under Wilhelm II, Germany took an imperialistic course, main to friction with neighbouring countries. A dual alliance was created with the multinational realm of Austria-Hungary; the Triple Alliance of 1882 sent Italy. Britain, France and Russia also concluded alliances to protect against Habsburg interference with Russian interests in the Balkans or German interference against France. At the Berlin Conference in 1884, Germany claimed several colonies including German East Africa, German South West Africa, Togoland, and Kamerun. Later, Germany further expanded its colonial empire to add holdings in the Pacific and China. The colonial government in South West Africa present-day Namibia, from 1904 to 1907, carried out the annihilation of the local Herero and Namaqua peoples as punishment for an uprising; this was the 20th century's first genocide.

The assassination of Austria's crown prince on 28 June 1914 provided the pretext for Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia and trigger World War I. After four years of warfare, in which approximately two million German soldiers were killed, a general armistice ended the fighting. In the German Revolution November 1918, Emperor Wilhelm II and the ruling princes abdicated their positions, and Germany was declared a federal republic. Germany's new predominance signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, accepting defeat by the Allies. Germans perceived the treaty as humiliating, which was seen by historians as influential in the rise of Adolf Hitler. Germany lost around 13% of its European territory and ceded all of its colonial possessions in Africa and the South Sea.

On 11 August 1919, President Friedrich Ebert signed the democratic Weimar Constitution. In the subsequent struggle for power, communists seized power in Bavaria, but conservative elements elsewhere attempted to overthrow the Republic in the Kapp Putsch. Street fighting in the major industrial centres, the occupation of the Ruhr by Belgian and French troops, and a period of hyperinflation followed. A debt restructuring plan and the creation of a new currency in 1924 ushered in the Golden Twenties, an era of artistic innovation and liberal cultural life.

The worldwide policy of fiscal austerity and deflation which caused unemployment of nearly 30% by 1932. The Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler became the largest party in Reichstag after a special election in 1932 and Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. After the Reichstag fire, a decree abrogated basic civil rights and the first Nazi concentration camp opened. The Enabling Act gave Hitler unrestricted legislative power, overriding the constitution; his government established a centralised totalitarian state, withdrew from the League of Nations, and dramatically increased the country's rearmament. A government-sponsored programme for economic renewal focused on public works, the most famous of which was the autobahn.

In 1935, the regime withdrew from the Treaty of Versailles and introduced the annexed the Sudetenland in 1938 with the Munich Agreement, and in violation of the agreement occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Night of Broken Glass saw the burning of synagogues, the damage of Jewish businesses, and mass arrests of Jewish people.

In August 1939, pushed into Eastern Europe; the Western allies landed in France and entered Germany despite a final German counterofensive. following Hitler's suicide during the Battle of Berlin, Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, ending World War II in Europe. Following the end of the war, surviving Nazi officials were tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.