Language: German
Currency: Euro (EUR)
Calling Code: 49
Germany or officially the Federal Republic of
Germany is the most populous country in Central Europe, a member
state of the European Union and a signatory to the Schengen
Agreement. In terms of landscape, Germany stretches from the coasts
of the North and Baltic Seas in the north, with their bathing
beaches and mudflats, to the Alps in the south, with most of it
being flat or covered by low mountain ranges, the so-called low
mountain ranges. However, the country is best known to travelers for
its cultural treasures - since the late Middle Ages it has been one
of the centers of Europe in almost all disciplines of art, and
despite the destruction in the world wars, a lot of architecture
from Romanesque and Gothic to postmodern has been preserved.
Particularism/federalism has always played a major role in Germany,
which was also reflected in the late founding of the nation state in
1871. However, the "small state" is also due to a diverse cultural
wealth. Even in smaller towns there is often a rich scene with its
own traditions. On the other hand, there is no real central
metropolis - even if Berlin has played this role to some extent
since reunification, it dominates the cultural and economic life far
less than the capitals of most other countries.
Germany
originally goes back to the East Franconian Empire, which from 843
included the eastern part of the Frankish Empire after the death of
the last Frankish king, Louis the Pious, and thus almost all of
Central Europe including northern Italy. This passed into the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation, which remained a largely loose
federation of different monarchies until its end in 1806, in which
the conflict between the two most powerful individual states,
Prussia in the north and Austria in the north, especially from the
18th century onwards south, emerged.
After the occupation by
Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century, the individual states
continued to exist, loosely united in the German Confederation from
1815. The March Revolution of 1848/49, in which a first attempt was
made to establish a German national state, was unsuccessful. In
1871, under different circumstances, with the exclusion of Austria
and under the leadership of Prussia, the German Empire was founded,
a constitutional-parliamentary but oligarchically oriented monarchy.
After the First World War (1914-1918), the German Empire
collapsed and the democratic Weimar Republic was founded in 1919,
which was politically unstable and was also severely weakened by the
global economic crisis of 1929. As a result, the Nazis, strengthened
by these processes, came to power under Adolf Hitler in 1933,
established a bloody racist dictatorship and unleashed the Second
World War (1939-1945), in which more than 65 million people died.
After the war, Germany was divided into four zones of
occupation. While the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),
characterized by the social market economy, emerged from the
British, American and French zones of occupation in 1949, the
socialist and planned economy-oriented German Democratic Republic
(GDR) was founded in the Soviet zone of occupation. As a result of
the economic miracle in the Federal Republic of Germany in the
1950s, many East Germans emigrated. The GDR leadership put an end to
this loss of well-trained people in 1961, when the “loophole” Berlin
was closed with the construction of the Berlin Wall. It was not
until the end of the Cold War that the peaceful revolution (1989)
began, which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
Reunification was celebrated on October 3, 1990.
For historical reasons, the regions still play a major role in Germany today. The diversity of Germany is clearly reflected in the large number of regions with their specific characteristics.
Northern Germany (Bremen,
Hamburg, Lower
Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania,
Schleswig-Holstein)
Western
Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia,
Rhineland-Palatinate,
Saarland)
Central Germany (Hesse, Thuringia)
Eastern Germany (Berlin,
Brandenburg, Saxony,
Saxony-Anhalt)
Southern Germany
(Baden-Württemberg,
Bavaria)
The federal capital is Berlin, which was divided by
the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989 and is one of the cultural centers of
Germany. Other important cities are the Hanseatic city of Hamburg, the
Bavarian state capital Munich, the banking city of Frankfurt am Main,
Cologne with the cathedral and Mainz as carnival and Fastnacht
strongholds, Weimar as the city of Goethe and Schiller and many others
such as the baroque city of Dresden with the Frauenkirche and Semperoper
, romantic Heidelberg with its castle, dreamy Freiburg, the trade fair
cities of Hanover and Leipzig, the Main (wine) metropolis of Würzburg,
Swabian Stuttgart, the Ruhr area cities of Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and
Dortmund and to the south the suspension railway city of Wuppertal and
the fashion city of Düsseldorf , the ancient Moselle city of Trier and
the second oldest city of Augsburg, founded by the Romans.
The
medieval old towns of Rothenburg, Regensburg, Bamberg, Görlitz, Erfurt,
Quedlinburg, Goslar, Lübeck, Stralsund, Wismar or Wittenberg are
important cultural assets and some of them are part of the UNESCO World
Heritage. Important cathedral cities such as Aachen, Hildesheim,
Paderborn, Naumburg (Saale), Speyer, Worms or Münster (Westphalia) show
the historical development of Christianity in Germany and some of the
cathedrals are also part of the UNESCO World Heritage. The result of the
small state system of past centuries is a large number of residence
cities, also of the second tier, such as Darmstadt, Dessau, Karlsruhe,
Kassel, Oldenburg or Schwerin, but also Gotha or Altenburg, which have a
remarkable cultural and historical diversity as well as their specific
character. After the Second World War, Bonn on the Rhine was the federal
capital until 1990, the seat of government until 1999 and thus also the
political center of the Federal Republic in the post-war period.
In addition to the islands and the coast on the North
and Baltic Seas, the low mountain ranges such as the Black Forest or the
Sauerland are particularly important holiday areas. Lake Constance and
the Bavarian Forest and the wine region of Franconia in the south, the
Harz Mountains in the middle, and the Mecklenburg Lake District in the
north-east are other examples of tourist areas.
Numerous river
valleys and holiday regions are ideal for cycling tours.
In
addition to many large-scale cultural facilities from the 19th and 20th
centuries (Route of Industrial Culture), the Ruhr area offers the
highest density of various public trend sports facilities in Germany.
If you are interested in technology, you will find many railway
routes worth seeing in Germany, on which "old steam horses" are still
panting.
Amusement park fans also get their money's worth in
Germany. One example is Europapark Rust, Germany's largest amusement
park with the most roller coasters in Europe.
The Green Belt is
the first all-German nature conservation project and was created along
the former inner-German border strip.
Particularism/federalism has always played a major
role in Germany, which was also reflected in the late founding of the
nation state in 1871. However, the "small state" is also due to a
diverse cultural wealth. Even in smaller towns there is often a rich
scene with its own traditions. On the other hand, there is no real
central metropolis - even if Berlin has played this role to some extent
since reunification, it dominates the cultural and economic life far
less than the capitals of most other countries.
Germany
originally goes back to the East Franconian Empire, which from 843
included the eastern part of the Frankish Empire after the death of the
last Frankish king, Louis the Pious, and thus almost all of Central
Europe including northern Italy. This passed into the Holy Roman Empire
of the German Nation, which remained a largely loose federation of
different monarchies until its end in 1806, in which the conflict
between the two most powerful individual states, Prussia in the north
and Austria in the north, especially from the 18th century onwards
south, emerged.
After the occupation by Napoleon at the beginning
of the 19th century, the individual states continued to exist, loosely
united in the German Confederation from 1815. The March Revolution of
1848/49, in which a first attempt was made to establish a German
national state, was unsuccessful. In 1871, under different
circumstances, with the exclusion of Austria and under the leadership of
Prussia, the German Empire was founded, a constitutional-parliamentary
but oligarchically oriented monarchy.
After the First World War
(1914-1918), the German Empire collapsed and the democratic Weimar
Republic was founded in 1919, which was politically unstable and was
also severely weakened by the global economic crisis of 1929. As a
result, the Nazis, strengthened by these processes, came to power under
Adolf Hitler in 1933, established a bloody racist dictatorship and
unleashed the Second World War (1939-1945), in which more than 65
million people died.
After the war, Germany was divided into four
zones of occupation. While the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),
characterized by the social market economy, emerged from the British,
American and French zones of occupation in 1949, the socialist and
planned economy-oriented German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded in
the Soviet zone of occupation. As a result of the economic miracle in
the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s, many East Germans
emigrated. The GDR leadership put an end to this loss of well-trained
people in 1961, when the “loophole” Berlin was closed with the
construction of the Berlin Wall. It was not until the end of the Cold
War that the peaceful revolution (1989) began, which led to the fall of
the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Reunification was celebrated on
October 3, 1990.
entry requirements
Visas
In general, foreigners
who want to stay, work or study in Germany for more than 90 days per 180
days generally need a visa. EEA citizens and Switzerland are exempt from
this regulation. Other states have special regulations, such as B. that
the required residence permit can also be obtained after entry or that
only certain, e.g. biometric (travel) passports are valid. Which
regulation applies to which country can be seen on the list of countries
on visa requirements or exemptions from the Federal Foreign Office. If a
visa is required, you must apply for a visa in person at the responsible
German diplomatic mission. Application forms are also available online
(at the bottom) in several languages. The purpose of the trip is often
to provide evidence of sufficient financing for the stay, proof of valid
travel health insurance with a minimum coverage of €30,000 and the
willingness and ability to return to the country of origin in good time.
In addition, the identity card or passport must be valid for up to 3
months after departure. A "Schengen visa" (60€) entitles you to stay in
the entire Schengen area for 3 months, the national visa (75€) for
Germany also for longer stays. Both visas only entitle you to work or
study with a note (more under Learning and Working). Depending on the
reason for entry, processing can take several days or months (e.g. in
the case of gainful employment).
customs regulations
Not every
product can be imported into Germany without hesitation, there are many
restrictions and prohibitions. The specific regulations can be found on
the German customs website. In addition, the regulations of the country
of origin (and transit countries) should be known.
drug
Medicines for personal use may be carried in accordance with the
recommended dosage for a maximum of 3 months. Counterfeit, potentially
lethal and commonly used in doping substances are prohibited. Taking
narcotics or medicines containing narcotics is only permitted with a
medical certificate (original with translation) and official
certification from the respective country of origin.
cash
Upon
request or inquiries, the type, value, origin, etc. of cash must be
stated verbally. Cash and securities with a value of €10,000 or more
must be declared in writing (online form) when entering the country from
outside the EU. The cash declaration must be handed in at the nearest
customs office without being asked. If the information is not provided
or is incomplete or turns out to be incorrect (as precise as possible,
it is better to enter a higher value than too low), fines of up to
€1,000,000 are possible. In particular, the intended use should be
plausible, because officials are sometimes entitled to secure these
funds.
pets
To enter the country, dogs, cats and ferrets need
a registration, a tattoo or a microchip (mandatory since 2011), a valid
rabies vaccination and an EU pet passport (from the EU) or an official
veterinary certificate (from outside the EU). Otherwise there is a risk
of the animal leaving the country with costs, quarantine of several
months or euthanasia. Entry may only take place in a few ways (by plane
or ship, responsible authorities). More than 5 pets is a commercial
import.
Pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers,
Staffordshire bull terriers and bull terriers and their puppies and
crosses are classified as dangerous and may not be imported or kept.
There are exceptions for a period of up to 4 weeks or for specially
trained dogs (e.g. guide dogs, service dogs, etc.). In addition to the
usual required documents, the harmlessness must be proven.
Airplane
The most important airports in Germany are Frankfurt am Main
(FRA), Munich (MUC), Düsseldorf (DUS), Berlin Brandenburg (BER). Hamburg
(HAM), Cologne-Bonn (CGN), Stuttgart (STR), Hanover (HAJ), Nuremberg
(NUE), Bremen (BRE), Leipzig Halle (LEJ), Dresden (DRS),
Münster/Osnabrück (FMO), Saarbrücken (SCN) and Erfurt-Weimar Airport
(ERF) are other important airports for international air traffic. There
are also a number of other regional commercial airports, so that there
is an airport near almost every half-million city.
The increase
in point-to-point traffic, as well as the hub and spoke procedure with
low-cost airlines or classic scheduled airlines, has led to smaller
airports being expanded and thus an even larger flight offer in the
area. These airports include Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN), Dortmund (DTM), Weeze
(NRN), Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden (FKB), Memmingen (FMM), Paderborn-Lippstadt
(PAD) and Friedrichshafen (FDH). From here there are mostly bus
connections to the next larger cities. However, since these airports are
also far away from the cities that give them their name, the costs for
the journey and very long travel times must be taken into account. An
extreme example is Frankfurt-Hahn Airport in the Hunsrück in
Rhineland-Palatinate: the nearest major cities are Koblenz and Trier
(both 50 km), while the eponymous city of Frankfurt am Main is over 120
kilometers away in Hesse.
The border airports of Salzburg (SZG),
Innsbruck (INN), Zurich (ZRH), Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg (BSL/MLH/EAP),
Strasbourg (SXB) and Luxembourg (LUX) are also of interest. Some of
these are even included in systems such as Deutsche Bahn's RAIL&FLY.
"Flag carrier" and undisputed "top dog" at many German airports is
Lufthansa, which is no longer state-owned but still maintains excellent
contacts in politics. In the meantime, Lufthansa has handed over many
flights to Eurowings, the group's low-cost airline, where you have to
pay extra for almost everything (except the flight itself). Other German
airlines are Condor and TUIfly. In addition to the low-cost airlines,
which in Germany often only fly to smaller airports with cheaper fees
and often cancel routes when subsidies are removed, there are also a
number of foreign flag carriers who connect their respective hubs to the
larger German airports, mostly Frankfurt or Munich.
entry
requirements
When entering the country by air, special entry
regulations must be observed. At many German airports, there is a
so-called "two-channel processing procedure" for faster processing,
which means there are two ways to enter the country. While the green
exit is for goods that do not require declaration, the red exit is for
goods that must be declared. There are constant checks at the red exit
and this is where the goods are declared at customs, but there are also
frequent (as-needed) checks at the green exit. If in doubt, the red
output should always be used.
Rail
In principle, it is
possible to travel to Germany by train from all neighboring countries.
There are long-distance connections from Austria, Switzerland, the
Netherlands and France every hour or every two hours. To all other
neighboring countries (except Luxembourg; only regional traffic) there
is a regular connection to the respective capital.
However,
cross-border regional traffic can still be expanded. The rolling stock
from the 1970s is gradually being replaced by multiple units and, in
local transport, by double-decker trains, with more and more routes
being taken over by private companies. With the exception of Austria,
Switzerland and Sweden, all neighboring countries have different
traction current networks and signaling systems. Therefore, only a few
trains can operate in the neighboring countries. Only the 3rd ICE
generation was equipped with multi-current systems, so that these
multiple units are now also used in the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
If possible, you should not use the relatively expensive normal fare
of the train. There are various discounts that can be used to make train
journeys attractively priced (e.g. use of the Bahncard, savings prices
with a specific train). It should be noted that in Germany, seat
reservations are recommended on long-distance trains on weekends and
holiday periods, as most seats are reserved. Travelers with a discount
subscription (Austrian Vorteilscard, Swiss half-fare card/GA) receive a
discount on rail journeys to Germany in cross-border traffic (discounts
analogous to the BahnCard 25). Since many savings offers (especially
those in long-distance transport) are based on occupancy, it can be said
that a reservation is probably not necessary if you can get a ticket for
€29 the day before the trip. According to Deutsche Bahn statistics, the
long-distance trains are the emptiest on Tuesday around noon.
Swiss people are recommended to book tickets from their place of
residence or border station directly with Deutsche Bahn or their
internet portal (tickets are sent to Switzerland without additional
fees) and not via the SBB (the fees are often much higher there). It
must be stated whether you have a half-fare card or GA.
bus
Since the long-distance bus market was liberalized in 2012, a dense
network of long-distance bus routes has developed within Germany, but
international bus connections are also offered. In addition to the
traditional integration into the Eurolines network, Flixbus is the most
widely represented brand offering international bus travel. Connections,
fares, stop search and route maps can be viewed via the online portal
Busliniensuche.de.
car/motorcycle/bicycle
Each neighboring
country has one or more motorway connections to Germany. The use of the
state highway is free of charge for passenger cars including caravans.
Toll plans in the 2010s failed due to the unequal treatment of nationals
and foreigners criticized by the European Court of Justice in 2019. A
special feature is that you can theoretically drive as fast as you want
on German autobahns – if there is no signposted limit. However, a
"recommended speed" of 130km/h applies, which is important in the event
of a traffic violation. A general limit of 50 km/h applies in built-up
areas and 100 km/h outside of built-up areas. However, lower speed
limits are possible everywhere, especially at construction sites,
accident black spots and for noise protection. For example, walking
speed (approx. 7km/h) must be observed in traffic-calmed areas.
Environmental zones have been set up in 56 German cities, in which only
cars (including electric cars) with a green environmental sticker are
allowed (exception: a yellow sticker is sufficient for Neu-Ulm). Drivers
without the appropriate badge must expect a fine of €80. For tourists
and business travelers, also with cars rented in other European
countries, the issue of the environmental badge requires the submission
of copies of the vehicle documents.
In Switzerland, these can be
obtained from TCS. Cars rented in Switzerland already have the
environmental sticker, while those in Austria do not. In addition,
driving bans apply in more than a dozen cities in Germany, which
primarily contain a traffic ban for diesel vehicles below the Euro 6
emission standard.
In the case of traffic violations in Germany,
you have to pay a corresponding warning or fine (often immediately). For
more serious offenses (maximum three) points in Flensburg, sometimes a
driving ban of up to three months. After eight points, the driver's
license will be withdrawn for at least six months or the driving ban
(exclusively) for Germany will be noted on it.
With the electric
car
There are currently around 40,000 charging stations in Germany
(as of March 2021).
Ship
There are daily ferry departures from
Kiel to Oslo, Gothenburg and Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea coast. From the
Skandinavienkai in Lübeck-Travemünde, TT-Line, Stena Line and Finnlines
ferries run regularly to Trelleborg (Sweden), Malmö (Sweden), Helsinki
(Finland) and St. Petersburg (Russia). From Rostock there are ferry
connections to Gedser (Denmark) and Trelleborg (Sweden). More
information in the article Ferries in Germany.
See also: Baltic Sea
Ferries
Several ferries on Lake Constance offer the possibility
of crossing from Switzerland and Austria to Germany. However, most of
them are purely passenger ferries, ferries where you can also take your
car are rare (e.g. Friedrichshafen-Romanshorn). There are regular
passenger ships between Vienna and Passau.
In general, the ferry
connections to and from Germany are not quite as extensive as those in
the Nordic countries, but can certainly keep up with the southern and
western neighbors. Especially if you arrive by car, the ferry trip can
be different, e.g. B. from / to Denmark or Sweden but very worthwhile,
because you save a lot of kilometers and fuel.
The North Sea
island of Borkum can be reached by ferry from Emden as well as from
Eemshaven in the Netherlands.
By tram
The trams from
Strasbourg and Basel each have a cross-border line to Germany.
By plane
There is a very well developed scheduled
flight network in Germany. The largest airlines in Germany are Lufthansa
and its subsidiary Eurowings. The Lufthansa Group now has a monopoly in
air traffic on the vast majority of domestic German routes, and
competition is virtually only between the modes of transport, here
primarily with the train. In the course of Air Berlin's insolvency,
Easyjet secured part of the bankruptcy assets (the lion's share went to
Lufthansa) and is expected to compete directly with Deutsche Bahn and
Lufthansa on some domestic German routes. Ryanair offers an extensive
route network from many German airports, but hardly any domestic
flights. Within Germany it is almost always cheaper to travel by train,
but sometimes there are offers that are or appear to be cheaper than the
train - especially for newcomers to the market. However, you often have
to calculate fees for various things that are included with the train or
other airlines (e.g. printing a boarding pass), especially with
"low-cost airlines". In addition, some airports served by budget
airlines are "in the middle of nowhere" and getting to the airport can
take some time, money and nerves.
By train
The rail system in
Germany is largely well developed, but there are gaps in rural areas.
The travel speed in regional traffic usually leaves a lot to be desired.
Since 1991, Germany has had its own high-speed rail network made up of
new and upgraded lines, on which comfortable ICEs (Intercity Express)
travel at up to 300 km/h. The long-distance network is supplemented by
ICs (Intercity) (known across borders as EC (Eurocity)) and in areas
close to the border by foreign long-distance trains. Germany belongs to
InterRail zone C.
Traveling by train is relatively expensive,
especially in long-distance traffic (ICE, IC/EC). The state-owned
Deutsche Bahn AG is still a virtual monopolist. You can save a lot of
money with the saver price if you book at least one day in advance. The
prices depend on the occupancy of the trains. During the week in
particular, but also on Saturdays, bargains are often available the day
before departure. However, on popular travel days (Christmas, Easter,
Friday and Sunday) and destinations, it can get expensive a week or two
beforehand. If the cheapest contingents are fully booked, a higher fare
will be offered. Routes up to 250km are offered from €19, longer routes
from €29, in pairs from €49 and routes abroad from €39, and cheaper for
short “hops” across the border (e.g. Dresden-Prague). BahnCard 25
holders receive an additional 25% discount on all saver fares. Family
children under the age of 15 travel free of charge. There is a train
connection, i.e. you have to use the specified train at the specified
time.
The BahnCard 25 or 50 is worthwhile for frequent travelers.
For an annual fee of €59.90 or €244, respectively, there is a 25 or 50%
discount on the fare, with the BahnCard 25 also allowing you to use the
savings price mentioned above. For pupils and students up to the age of
26 and people over the age of 60, the My BahnCard costs €36.90 or €69.90
per year. Especially for the BahnCard 25 there are often special offers
for shorter terms. It is important to cancel in good time (at least six
weeks before expiry), otherwise the special offer will turn into a
regular BahnCard subscription at the regular price. These prices also
apply to the partner card. For journeys of more than 100km, you get the
City-Ticket for 130 cities, with which you can use the buses, trams,
underground and suburban trains at the starting point and destination
(observe local regulations!).
Caution: When you buy a BahnCard,
you take out a subscription that is automatically renewed if it is not
canceled in good time.
local transport
The
Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket is valid from Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to
3:00 a.m. on the following day and on Saturdays, Sundays and public
holidays from 0:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. on the following day throughout
Germany on all regional trains (IRE, RE, RB, S-Bahn), it costs €44 for
the first person and €8 per passenger (max. four passengers) at
machines, in the Internet and in DB service stores, at ticket offices
and in travel agencies with a DB license there is a surcharge of €2 per
ticket.
From 1 May 2023, the Deutschlandticket, a local transport
ticket valid throughout Germany for €49 per person per month, will be
introduced. With the tariff, the entire local transport (e.g. 2nd class
of RE∗ and RB, as well as S-Bahn, U-Bahn, many regional and city buses)
can be used; but not long-distance traffic (ICE, IC or EC). Up to 3
children under the age of 6 can travel with each ticket; other details
such as taking bicycles and dogs with you vary depending on the
transport association in which you travel. The ticket is only available
as a subscription, either via app or in the form of a chip card, and can
be purchased from any provider (especially transport associations and
companies) of the same value. It is worth comparing different providers:
There are different purchase and cancellation periods (usually several
weeks!), sometimes credit checks are carried out, more payment methods
are accepted or vouchers are issued as a bonus. If you need a ticket at
short notice, you get comparatively advantageous conditions with the
RMV: The HandyTicket has no deadline to order, you can also buy it in
the month and credit cards are accepted as a means of payment.
In
regional transport, there are nationwide country tickets, with which up
to 5 people can travel Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. of
the following day (on weekday holidays and in most countries also at the
weekend from 0:00 a.m.) at a flat rate between 23 and 42€ can use all
regional trains and often also the buses and light rail in transport
associations. In most federal states, the tickets are staggered
according to the number of passengers. Not so in Berlin, Brandenburg and
Hesse. North Rhine-Westphalia still has a single version that is €13
cheaper. If you are moving within a transport association, it is usually
worth taking a look at the range of day tickets, group day tickets or
season tickets valid for 3-4 days, a week or a month.
In
addition, there are distance-dependent savings offers in regional
transport, such as the Regio120 ticket. In contrast to savings offers in
long-distance transport, savings prices in regional transport are always
available without restrictions.
The Deutsche Bahn timetable
information is very useful: if you click on “advanced”, connections can
be found from door to door (stop or address input can be selected),
including information on walking (with time and map), bus, underground
and tram and of course the trains throughout Europe.
By bus
Traditionally, bus networks in Germany are primarily used for local
transport, but have recently also gained ground in long-distance
transport.
long-distance buses
Since the liberalization of the
long-distance bus market in January 2013, a rapidly growing network of
long-distance bus lines from various providers has emerged. The market
is competitive, so that the offers are subject to constant changes in
terms of prices as well as in relation and frequency of trips. The
largest providers are FlixBus and Eurolines.
Simplex-Mobility,
which publishes a monthly updated timetable for all providers in the
style of a course book, tries to provide an overview of the entire range
of buses.
A search engine for the targeted search for individual
connections and prices is available at Busliniensuche.
For
long-distance buses, booking in advance with a reservation is strongly
recommended, as this is the only way to get cheap prices. Spontaneous
purchases from the driver are possible, but at a higher standard rate
and with the risk of stopping when the bus is fully booked. In general,
the fares are significantly lower than those of a comparable train
ticket.
In the street
In Germany, longer distances can be
covered extremely quickly by car. This is ensured by the well-developed
road network. The motorways in particular ensure high travel speeds, as
there is no general speed limit. However, it should be pointed out that
in the event of an accident, a significantly higher speed than 130 km/h
(= legal recommended speed) usually results in criminal measures and can
lead to problems with the insurance company. If you don't have your own
car, there are a number of national and international car rental
companies. Generally, a credit card and a valid driver's license are
required to rent a car in Germany. In the meantime, you can also use
intermediaries such as B. Auto Europe rent a car cheaper than directly
from the respective car rental company. One-way rentals are also
possible with Auto Europe. H. you can pick up the rental car in one city
and drop it off in another.
For Swiss and Liechtensteiners
Motorists from Switzerland and Liechtenstein should note the following
differences:
The inner-city speed of 50 km/h applies from the
sign at the entrance to the town, unless a different speed is indicated
there, and the speed outside the town of 100 km/h also applies from the
sign that leaves the town. These panels are not only informative in
nature. On the other hand, a motor road (“Autostrasse” in Switzerland)
has no influence on the maximum speed allowed.
Speeding fines are
much deeper and have fewer consequences, leading many drivers to be less
particular about the speed limit. On the other hand, alcohol consumption
(max. 0.5 per thousand) is punished rigorously.
In built-up areas -
and only there - on a road with several lanes, vehicles under 3.5 tons
can freely choose their lane, so overtaking on the right is allowed
there.
Priority roads (in Germany they are referred to as priority
roads) can be recognized by the signaling (called traffic signs there).
The color of the signposts (beige, white) says nothing about whether a
road has priority. Rather, beige signposts indicate out-of-town
destinations, while white signposts indicate in-town destinations.
On
motorways in the fast lane, it is not uncommon for a driver to use light
signals at the rear to indicate that space is to be vacated. In Germany,
this isn't necessarily considered rude rudeness, so the best thing to do
is not to get angry and vacate the spot.
In Germany, switching on the
lights is only mandatory when visibility is poor. If oncoming drivers
want to point something out with light signals on a bright day, it can
also be because the light is switched on. However, the practice of
pointing this out is declining due to the proliferation of built-in
daytime running lights in newer cars. As a rule, one can assume that
there will be a warning about a mobile speed control (radar trap).
Even if this is hardly noticed in practice, cars must have a CH or FL
sticker on the rear (you can also buy magnetic stickers at almost every
petrol station shop). Only the large format is accepted, the small
format, which is also frequently sold, does not meet the requirements.
Environmental badges for German city centers can be obtained from the
TCS. To do this, you need to visit a TCS branch with your vehicle
registration document. For a fee, they mail the plaque, it will arrive
in a few days.
By boat
In addition to some ferries to z. B. to
reach the North Sea islands, to cross Lake Constance, or to cross
different rivers, there are also excursions and cruises in Germany on
the big rivers such as the Rhine, the Elbe or the Danube. The entire
length of the Rhine in Germany is navigable for commercial shipping.
Since the navigable rivers are supplemented by a few canals, it is
also relatively easy to travel with pleasure boats. Important navigable
rivers are the Rhine, Ems, Weser, Elbe, Oder, Danube; tributaries are
often also navigable. Important inland canals are the Mittelland Canal,
the Elbe Lateral Canal and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. In addition,
there is the lake waterway Kiel Canal.
International ferry
terminals are located in Lübeck-Travemünde, Kiel and Rostock.
German is the official national language. Most people speak dialects - according to their regions - and sometimes use different expressions for one and the same term. However, High German is understood everywhere and is mostly spoken to "foreigners". Most Germans speak English as a second language and French is also understood relatively often (especially in the southwest). Furthermore, several million people of Turkish descent speak Turkish, but mostly not at the level of their mother tongue. In the tourist centers other European languages are also used as languages of education, e.g. B. Italian and Spanish. In the former GDR, you can be lucky with Russian, especially with people who went to school during the GDR era. In Germany there are also small regional minorities who still speak their own languages. These include the Frisians in the north and the Sorbs in the east of the country. On the northern border of Germany, Danish is also sometimes understood, since a Danish minority has always lived in southern Schleswig and a German minority in northern Schleswig (Denmark). Low German (also known as "Low German"), which is still spoken in parts of the north and west, is very similar to Dutch and speakers of both languages can usually understand each other at least rudimentarily.
Cycling: There is a network of relatively well
signposted cycle paths throughout Germany. Most of these cycle paths
have a paved or water-bound surface. Some of them run on roads with
little traffic. Many cycle routes lead along rivers or on former railway
lines, have correspondingly low gradients and are also suitable for
families with children. The quality of cycle paths and their signage
varies in the individual districts and federal states.
Hiking: Many
low mountain range regions can be discovered on hikes. Hiking has a long
tradition in Germany. There are excellent offers in many regions. One of
the most famous hiking trails is z. B. the Rennsteig in the Thuringian
Forest. Another classic is the Brocken hike in the Harz Mountains. You
can even walk to Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze.
Winter
sports: Alpine and Nordic winter sports have a long tradition in
Germany. Of course, the ski areas in the German Alps are well known. But
there are also attractive areas in the low mountain ranges. These are
particularly popular with cross-country skiers. Information about winter
sports can be found in the article Winter sports in Germany.
Water
hiking: whether in a canoe, kayak or rowing boat, the smaller German
rivers in particular are ideal for water hiking. Usually there is little
or no commercial shipping here. Popular areas include the Lahn and the
upper Weser. But the Mecklenburg Lake District and the Spreewald are
also very popular with paddlers. Information on water hiking in Germany
can be found in the relevant topic article.
Excursion by handcar:
Handcar cycling is becoming more and more popular in Germany. It is
therefore not surprising that more and more disused railway lines can be
discovered with handcars. There are now around 30 railway routes that
can be explored by renting a bicycle trolley. The largest selection of
routes is in northern and eastern Germany. Here in Brandenburg and
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the tourist and economic potential
offered by handcar routes has already been discovered. Southern Germany,
on the other hand, is still struggling a little when it comes to
attractive leisure activities. All draisine routes are listed in the
article draisine routes in Germany.
Wellness: Wellness is becoming
increasingly popular. In Germany, too, there are many beautiful wellness
hotels and wellness regions. Some of these have specialized in wellness
treatments with regional products (such as thalassotherapy by the sea,
vino wellness in the wine-growing region, etc.). But more exotic offers
such as Ayurveda hotels or wellness hotels specializing in traditional
Chinese medicine can also be found in Germany. If you don't want to
start a wellness holiday right away, you can also experience a wellness
day in one of the numerous relaxation and thermal baths or a day spa. In
Germany, in addition to very modern and large facilities, there are also
historic bathhouses and bathing complexes, some of which are based on
the Baroque model.
Journey to the German tip communities
Money
The valid means of payment is the euro.
Germany is (alongside Switzerland) one of the few industrialized
countries in which payments are still predominantly made in cash (2022:
60% cash, 40% card payments). The acceptance of card payments has
improved significantly in recent years, but there are still numerous
services that can always or almost exclusively be paid for with cash:
small shops such as bakers and butchers, market stalls (weekly or
Christmas market), taxi ( in some cities like Berlin the taxi can also
be paid by card), parking fees, most restaurants up to the upper
category. Checks have not been accepted for years.
The most
important banks are: Sparkasse, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank,
Volksbank-Raiffeisenbanken, Postbank and Sparda-Banken. The cash supply
is guaranteed by a dense network of ATMs, for which the banks have
joined one of four large ATM associations: Savings Bank Network
(Sparkassen), BankCard ServiceNetz (mainly Volksbank-Raiffeisenbanken),
Cash Group (including Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Postbank) and cash
pool (e.g. Sparda banks). You can easily withdraw money from the
machines with credit and debit cards, as well as all cards that belong
to the global Maestro network. If the machine belongs to the ATM network
of your own bank, the withdrawal i. i.e. R. (depending on the card!)
free of charge, but otherwise quite high fees may apply under certain
circumstances. Some banks also offer the possibility to withdraw money
at some supermarket checkouts if a minimum purchase amount has been
exceeded. For more information on toll-free ATMs, contact the
card-issuing bank or credit card company.
For small amounts, cash
is usually preferred because of the lower cost, especially in cafes and
restaurants. In some cases, there are also minimum payment amounts from
which card payment is only accepted.
The acceptance of (foreign)
credit cards is very low in Germany, since most Germans do not have a
credit card either (actually only those who travel abroad regularly).
Visa and Mastercard are the most common, American Express and Diners
Club are almost useless in Germany. Credit cards are most likely to be
accepted by supermarket chains and gas stations, but smaller
supermarkets or independent gas stations often do not accept credit
cards. Even the taxi from the airport (e.g. Berlin) can only be paid for
with cash or with a Girocard, but not with a credit card. Anyone leaving
abroad must first withdraw cash directly at the airport, but thanks to
the dense network of ATMs in Germany this is not a major problem. Hotels
in the big cities can almost always be paid for by credit card, if you
are traveling to the country or if you are planning to stay in a holiday
apartment, it is better to book in advance via a hotel portal or take
enough cash with you. Card payment accepted refers almost exclusively to
the Girocard/EC cards, which are only available in Germany.
Pay
contactless with your cell phone: It is still in the early stages and is
only accepted in the large supermarket chains Rewe/Aldi/Lidl and at
branded petrol stations. It is rarely possible at independent petrol
stations and smaller supermarket chains.
tips
It is generally
less common in Germany to tip than in the US, for example. When paying
with cash, it is common to "round up" (e.g. €4 instead of €3.70), or
give a bill that is slightly more than the amount requested and say
"that's right" (i.e .change is given as a tip). It's common practice in
restaurants to tip about 10 percent, although it's not entirely uncommon
not to tip when service has been poor or unfriendly. For taxis, rounding
up as mentioned above is usually sufficient.
opening hours
The
shop opening hours are the responsibility of the federal states and so
there is no national regulation. Twelve of the 16 federal states have
completely released their opening times from Monday to Friday and until
8 p.m. or 10 p.m. on Saturdays. In Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony,
shops have to close at 10 p.m.; in Bavaria and Saarland it is no longer
allowed to sell after 8 p.m.
In most regions in Germany, shops
are not open after 8 p.m., only a few supermarket chains and shopping
malls in large cities have extended their opening hours to 10 p.m. In
rural areas, shops may have a lunch break from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
and are closed on Wednesday afternoons. The historical closing time in
the evening at 6.30 p.m. was often retained.
Tourists from abroad
are always surprised that almost all shops in Germany are closed on
Sundays. Only bakeries (but usually only three hours in the morning) and
petrol stations are also open on Sundays. Exceptions only apply to shops
at airports and train stations and in health resorts, but there with a
hefty surcharge. If you arrive on Sunday, you should stock up on the
essentials right at the airport/train station. In some cities, there are
Sunday shops on which, exceptionally, it is also possible to shop on
Sundays.
Restaurants, pubs, cafés and the like are not bound by
the Shop Closing Hours Act; the opening hours are regulated by the
municipality and vary accordingly. Irrespective of this, Monday is
traditionally a day off in gastronomy, some of the restaurants are
closed on this day.
Banks and post offices have comparatively
limited opening hours. Post offices are usually open Monday to Friday
between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. and Saturdays until 12 noon. This can be
significantly reduced for smaller branches (mainly in rural areas).
Banks usually close at 4 p.m. and are completely closed on Saturdays.
However, many banks and post offices have ATMs and stamp machines
(the latter do not give change, but stamps of the appropriate value)
that are accessible 24 hours a day. ATMs have been established at larger
train stations and (motorway) petrol stations for a number of years.
However, caution is advised here. You should find out about the amount
of the fees at the machine beforehand.
There is no specific German cuisine, instead there are
many very different regional cuisines. After the Second World War,
German cuisine was also significantly influenced by the occupying powers
- while Eastern European dishes (especially solyanka (stew) in numerous
variations) are now common in the East, fast food establishments in the
West (especially in the Ruhr area) have developed fast, filling cuisine
enforced (roast chicken, french fries, meatballs, currywurst). The
domestic kitchen as well as the upscale restaurant in the West differs
significantly from this prejudice. While Baden cuisine - probably due to
its proximity to France - convinces with its comparatively high quality
and large portions, Frisian cuisine (in northern Germany) does so
primarily because of its originality.
In Germany there is also a
large selection of international restaurants. Italian, Greek, Croatian,
Chinese companies often offer good quality; in many places they are
superior to establishments with German cuisine. Takeaway restaurants
predominate in Turkish establishments; however, there are also
restaurants with more sophisticated Turkish cuisine in many cities.
Smoking in restaurants is only permitted to a limited extent or not
at all nationwide. However, the federal states have designed the details
and exceptions differently. In most cases, no persons under the age of
18 are allowed in guest rooms where smoking is permitted. This severely
limits the range of pubs and takeaway restaurants that are suitable for
families. However, there are often separate rooms, so that you can
easily stop off with the family during the day. As so often, the same
applies here: it costs nothing to ask.
gastronomy ratings
There is no official evaluation body for the kitchen services of a
restaurant in Germany, but there are various unofficial and well-known
evaluation systems.
GuideMichelin
The internationally
best-known rating system is the Michelin Rouge Guide from the French
automotive supplier Michelin. In Germany, stars have been awarded since
1966, especially for top cuisine. The evaluation is reviewed every year,
the testers visit and taste anonymously. The stars are tied to the chef
of the respective restaurant: if he leaves the company, the stars go
too.
In Germany there are currently (2013) eleven three-star
hotels, 37 two-star and 226 one-star restaurants. Altogether there are
274 star addresses in Germany; there are more worldwide only in France.
Gault Millau
The gastronomic guide Gault Millau also comes from
France and was founded there in 1969 by the two journalists Henri Gault
and Christian Millau; the German edition has existed since 1983. Gault
Millau awards restaurants, based on the French school grading system,
between 0 and a maximum of 20 points up to four toques (also caps) to
the "toque chefs". Only the kitchen is rated and not the equipment and
the ambience, which is only described verbosely to aggressively.
According to the will of the founders, the maximum of 20 points is only
available in France and not abroad. Gault Millau has long been
considered an advocate of modern cuisine, but according to its own
statements, there is no tendency towards a particular style of cooking.
In 2013, 1,040 restaurants were tested in Germany, 858 of which received
at least 13 out of 20 points and thus an award.
Gault Millau also
classifies wine: according to a 100-point system, 12,000 selected wines
are evaluated by a dozen selected wine journalists, and the jury is
familiar with the wine.
Nightlife is most diverse in the big cities.
Especially in the field of electronic music (techno, house, electro),
the country is considered one of the centers of the global scene. Some
of the famous clubs that spawned new trends in the 80's and 90's are
still operational and popular with visitors, although most have since
closed. But there are also bars and clubs in rock, pop, reggae and metal
in many cities. Germany is also considered one of the centers of the
so-called black scene, which includes gothic, darkwave and similar
"gloomy" directions. In many of these directions there are festivals of
international importance.
In rural areas, on the other hand,
large-capacity discotheques are typical, which are often located on
motorways or in commercial areas. They try to attract as many youth
cultures as possible with different styles of music.
But there
are nocturnal entertainment venues not only for teenagers and young
adults. For example, there are jazz bars in many cities. Some casinos,
such as that of Baden-Baden, also have a world reputation.
Some
German cities have fixed curfew hours, typically between 3 a.m. and 6
a.m. In many cities, however, the regulations have been relaxed
significantly in the last two decades.
The DEHOGA (German Hotel and Restaurant Association)
defines a hotel as an accommodation facility that i.a. must have a
reception, daily room cleaning, at least one restaurant for house guests
and passers-by, and more than 20 guest rooms.
The German hotel
classification is a rating system from one to five stars and is based on
the international five-star system. The classification is based on a
points system and a set list of criteria on a voluntary basis, so even a
non-classified hotel can meet very high requirements. DEHOGA is
responsible for the assessment and verification. Defined terms are the
addition garni for a hotel business that offers at most small dishes in
addition to accommodation, breakfast and drinks. The suffix superior
identifies top companies that clearly exceed the required number of
evaluation points within a category.
The G classification (German
classification for guest houses, inns and pensions) also includes
categories from one to five stars and is also awarded by DEHOGA and on a
voluntary basis. Accommodation establishments with more than nine guest
beds and no more than 20 guest rooms that do not have the character of a
hotel (see definition above) and whose establishment name must therefore
not contain the term hotel are assessed.
The German Tourism
Association also classifies holiday apartments and private rooms
according to a system with one to five stars from simple to exclusive.
Youth Hostels - All major cities have youth hostels or hostels that
offer cheap accommodation. DJH (Deutsches Jugendherbergswerk) hostels
require membership, which can also be purchased at check-in. The
standard is relatively high compared to other countries (sometimes
better than some 2-star hotels). Attention: DJH hostels usually offer
breakfast and sometimes dinner as well, but they are rarely equipped
with guest kitchens! No membership is required for privately run
hostels. Average prices are between €12 and €20 per night in 4 to 12 bed
rooms/dorms. These independently and individually managed houses are the
first choice for everyone who wants to escape the DJH flair. Many
backpacker hostels in Germany are connected to the Backpacker Network
Germany. Linen can usually be rented on site or is included in the
price. This category also includes "nature friends houses" and
businesses run by hiking clubs. Members of the respective clubs receive
preferential prices here.
Hotels/guesthouses - Otherwise there are
guesthouses (approx. €20 - €40 per person bed and breakfast) and of
course hotels in all price ranges. Inexpensive hotels are usually
located outside of town on busy roads with poor public transport
connections. Medium-sized hotel chains in particular, such as Ringhotels
or Romantik Hotels, usually offer reliable value for money. Usually,
prices in big cities and popular resorts are higher than in other
places. Surcharges are also required at certain times of the year. It is
also worth taking a look at the trade fair calendar. In most cases "bed
and breakfast" is offered, but some hotels and guesthouses charge for
breakfast separately.
Private rooms There are of course also
privately operated guest houses and guest rooms in Germany. Bed and
breakfast is usually offered, often a bit cheaper than pensions.
Nationwide association see bed-and-breakfast.de.
Campgrounds - There
are one or more campgrounds in most areas; more than 3,500 in total.
There are plenty of campsites in holiday regions. Many of the sites are
open most of the year (except December/January) or even all year (heated
showers/washrooms). Prices (1 night/2 people/1 tent/1 car): approx. €13
- €20 (although the price range is very large at approx. €7 - €40). The
vast majority of pitches are largely occupied by long-term campers. For
non-permanent campers there is usually a more or less large meadow. To
use the showers, shower tokens must be purchased on most pitches.
Mobile home parking spaces are available across the board. In rural
areas, use is free of charge, otherwise a parking ticket must generally
be purchased. Supply and disposal if available 1 € - 2 €.
Wild
camping - Wild camping is officially prohibited in all federal states
except Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg
(one night, away from campsites, for non-motorized travelers only), and
camping (i.e. in a sleeping bag or under a tent) is also permitted in
some places overnight blanket) is prohibited, especially in nature
reserves. In reality, wild camping is quite possible - especially in
sparsely populated areas, e.g. B. next to little used/frequented forest
paths and in shelters, if one behaves quietly and chooses places that
are not visible from houses.
Vacation rentals are often a very
affordable alternative. Short stays are sometimes associated with price
surcharges due to the cleaning effort. If the landlord lives in the same
house, breakfast can also be offered. Such accommodations are also
suitable for families and group travellers.
Rented apartments – If
you want to rent an apartment for a longer period of time, you should
know that in Germany apartments are usually rented without furniture and
a kitchen (exception: holiday apartments). The tenant must bring his own
furniture. Exceptions are special furnished apartments, which are often
rented for business trips of a few months. They are then more expensive
than unfurnished apartments. Furnished apartments are usually only
available in areas where vacation rentals are not worthwhile for
landlords. In typical holiday areas, such apartments are rarely
available. Outside the season, however, it can be worth asking landlords
of holiday apartments. However, there is a current housing shortage in
certain major cities (e.g. Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt/Main). Here it can
be difficult to get an apartment at all and if so, then only at a high
price.
Studies
In an international comparison, the German
education system is considered to be relatively good, even if it lags
behind that of many other service-providing nations in terms of quality.
In principle, every resident of Germany has a state-guaranteed right to
education. Tuition fees for a first degree are not (any longer) charged
in any federal state. Tuition fees for a second degree are charged in
three out of 16 federal states. There are fees for long-term students in
five federal states. The semester fee is obligatory, depending on the
university €60-300. Depending on the university, this includes the
semester ticket, with which you can use buses and trains in a wide area
free of charge.
In academic training, a distinction must be made
between the following training institutions:
University: Universities
with the right to award doctorates
University of applied
sciences/college: Type of university that conducts teaching and research
on a scientific basis with an application-oriented focus. At such a
University of Applied Sciences, however, you can usually neither do a
doctorate nor habilitate.
Vocational Academy - study with parallel
practical training in a company
Foreign students can apply for a
student visa, which also allows limited (120 full or 240 half days per
year plus max. 20 hours per week during the semester, unlimited for EU
citizens) work to finance their studies. It is possible to take up a
full degree or to do a semester abroad in Germany. After a full degree
you can look for work in the country for 18 months. Although Germany
does a lot of advertising for its universities abroad, many are
unfortunately put off by the bureaucracy. According to reports, you also
have to endure personal questions about extending your visa at the
immigration office. If possible, ask a German friend to accompany you to
the immigration office. This often ensures not only a better
understanding of the bureaucratic processes, but also friendlier
treatment. Further criticism is directed at additional fees that are
charged by some universities from foreigners. Regardless of this
criticism, most foreign students have good experiences in Germany, but
everything is far from perfect. Interested parties should consult the
website of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
In many cases, the job exchange of the Federal
Employment Agency offers an initial overview of job offers in Germany.
In addition to the Federal Employment Agency, private employment and
training agencies also mediate vacancies.
The recognition of
foreign professional qualifications is difficult and bureaucratic in
Germany, especially for employees from a non-EU country. Recognition can
take years or even not at all. There are many foreign workers with
university degrees who therefore have to take on simple, unskilled work.
Germany is a country where officially recognized vocational training is
very important, often more important than actual skills.
Germany
has numerous world-famous, large companies. But there are also many
medium-sized and small companies that are very suitable as employers.
Especially in the technical field, these are often the largest and
best-known companies in their industry worldwide, even if they only have
a few hundred or thousand employees.
In Germany there are many
free jobs in certain professions. Educators or specialists for hospitals
and geriatric care are particularly sought after. Craftsmen, technicians
and engineers also have good prospects if they are well trained.
However, the chances of finding work are not the same in all regions.
Unemployment is high in eastern Germany, and workers are particularly
sought after in the south. While many immigrants are concentrated in the
big cities, medium-sized companies often look for good staff in smaller
towns. These companies often offer a lot of support for immigrants to
Germany if they are well trained. If you don't have any training, you
have fewer chances of finding work in Germany, and if you don't speak
German, you will hardly find a job.
The average salary of an
employee for a 40-hour week is between €2,000 and €5,000 per month,
sometimes higher. In addition to taxes, the costs for social security
(pension, health and nursing care insurance) must also be deducted from
this. Some employers try again and again to force employees into
contracts in which no social insurance has to be paid. This is often not
legal and can get you in trouble with the police for both the employer
and the employee. In areas with high rents such as B. Munich it can be
very difficult to afford even a simple life, especially when there is a
family to take care of. Important: Just because there is an urgent need
for workers for a job does not mean that the pay is good. Educators or
nurses are not paid well, even if employers are desperate for
applicants.
Germany is one of the countries with the best social
security systems, even if social benefits have been repeatedly
restricted in recent decades. However, this also leads to significant
deductions from income.
In Germany, in addition to the national public
holidays, different regulations apply at the level of the federal
states. These public holidays can be found in the corresponding country
articles.
National public holidays:
Mon, Jan 1, 2024 New Year
New Year's Day
Fri Apr 7, 2023 Good Friday Commemoration of Christ's
crucifixion
Sun Apr 9, 2023 Easter Sunday Easter, commemoration of
Christ's resurrection
Mon Apr 10, 2023 Easter Monday Easter,
Commemoration of Christ's Resurrection
Mon May 1, 2023 May Day
International Labor Day
Thu, May 18, 2023 Ascension Day Commemoration
of Christ's Ascension
Sun, May 28, 2023 Pentecost Sunday
Commemoration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
Mon, May 29, 2023
Whit Monday Commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit
Tue, Oct.
3, 2023 Day of German Unity National holiday
Mon, Dec 25, 2023 Boxing
Day Christmas, commemoration of the birth of Christ
Tue, Dec 26, 2023
Boxing Day Christmas, commemoration of the birth of Christ
Christmas Eve (December 24) and New Year's Eve (December 31) are not
public holidays. Nevertheless, on these days many businesses are closed
all day and many shops and leisure facilities are closed from midday.
Depending on the city, local public transport can be severely restricted
or even stopped from the afternoon. Most of the restaurants are also
closed on Christmas Eve.
Germany is considered a safe travel destination.
Pickpockets are warned at train stations, airports and other crowds.
The so-called shell game is part of the scam, which is particularly
aimed at tourists. Here a scammer moves a small ball under several
shells on the street. The tourist has to guess under which shell the
ball is. The stakes are high, usually a hundred euros per try. The
tourist doesn't stand a chance, with a clever trick the ball is moved so
that he can't see it. The "spectators" around the player are partners of
the scammer, they also sometimes "win" to attract and deceive tourists.
Therefore, one should also know: in a dispute with the fraudster, he has
several helpers who do not shy away from violence. These gangs are
mainly active in Berlin.
Also especially in Berlin, street
vendors sell alleged pieces from the Berlin Wall or Russian uniforms.
Usually both are fakes.
Racist attacks by neo-Nazis are far less
common than foreigners fear, although there have been isolated cases.
Although millions of people from all parts of the world now live in
Germany, foreign tourists, especially in rural areas, occasionally
attract attention when they look "different". Normally you don't have to
expect more than curious glances. Smaller towns and prefabricated
housing estates in the east, but also partly in the west, as well as the
fan curves of certain football clubs have a particularly bad reputation,
although violent incidents are extremely rare here too. Racist attacks
are usually punished consistently by the judiciary.
Tolerance
towards openly shown homosexuality has developed positively in recent
years and hostilities or attacks are not to be expected, especially in
the big cities. Sad exceptional cases - among other things in connection
with right-wing extremism and religious fanaticism, especially male
youth - are rare and should not worry tourists too much.
Germany
is a little corrupt country. Corruption mainly exists in the business
world and through undeclared work. In everyday life with authorities,
the police and the judiciary, it plays no role. In Germany, attempts to
bribe officials can quickly end up in prison. The national police number
is 110, but it can also be reached via the European emergency number 112
or 911.
Medical care is good and the medical standard is very
high. There is both a nationwide rescue service and an emergency medical
service. The rescue service and the fire brigade can be reached under
the Europe-wide emergency number 112. This number is intended for pure
emergencies and is free of charge.
In the event of health
problems outside of office hours, there is a medical on-call service.
You can find out nationwide which doctor is doing this on the current
day by dialing the standard number 116 117. Since the doctors provide
this service in turn, the current practice can also be at the other end
of the town or in the neighboring town.
The same applies to
pharmacies. Outside of normal business hours, there is always at least
one pharmacy on call within a radius of 20 km, which you can research
online. You can also use the free telephone number +49 8000 022833
(22833 from a mobile phone at a maximum of 69 cents/min.) or look at the
notice in the nearby pharmacy. The services of the doctor and pharmacy
are not spatially coordinated, so that you may have to go to another
neighboring location to get the prescribed medication. An emergency
service fee of €2.50 may have to be paid for using the pharmacy
emergency service (e.g. at night).
The tap water is of food
quality and can be drunk anywhere without hesitation (exception: a no
drinking water sign).
The bathing waters vary in quality,
designated swimming pools usually have good water quality, natural pools
depend on current conditions (water level, discharges, occurrence of
blue-green algae, etc.) and are sometimes contaminated with coli, cyano
or other bacteria. For this reason, signs with bathing bans must be
observed. The water quality is monitored. More information can be
obtained from the municipalities. The Federal Environment Agency
reclassifies the bathing waters every year, and the assessment is
published on the Internet.
In the southern half of the Federal
Republic there is a considerable risk of TBE (tick-borne encephalitis)
and other diseases that are transmitted by tick bites. Appropriate
precautions and vaccinations are recommended for nature trips in this
area. The state Robert Koch Institute publishes epidemiological
bulletins on TBE: risk areas in Germany (text is intended for doctors,
clinics and laboratories), data that is more understandable for the
layperson (including a map under "Service") can be found on the tick
website. en.
Germany is in the temperate zone, extreme values rarely occur. In the west, the climate is oceanic, characterized by mild winters and cool summers. The average temperature in winter is mostly between 1°C and 3°C, in summer between 10°C and 18°C. Precipitation falls throughout the year, more in the west and less in the east. In the east, the climate is continental, characterized by cold winters and warm summers. The average temperatures in winter range from -3 °C to 0 °C, in summer from 18 °C to 20 °C. A special feature is the Upper Rhine Graben (Kaiserstuhl), where subtropical and Mediterranean microclimates can be found in places. As a result, the highest average and also the highest peak temperatures prevail here.
As in all countries, one should show a certain restraint when it comes to political or religious issues. One should be careful that derogatory statements or gestures that are sometimes common in other countries can constitute a criminal offense (insult) in Germany.
The use of National Socialist symbols or gestures,
such as B. the swastika or the Hitler salute is a criminal offense in
Germany. The penalty can be a fine or several years in prison. NEVER use
such symbols or gestures; You can get in serious trouble with the
police. The same goes for glorifying Nazism or denying the Holocaust.
For example, in 2008 a Mexican tourist posed with the Nazi salute in
Munich at the Square of Victims of National Socialism for a holiday
photo. She was arrested and could only continue her journey after paying
a fine of €450.
Most Germans strictly reject the goals and crimes
of the Third Reich. NEVER, as a foreign visitor, are allowed to wear
uniforms or symbols from that period as a party gag or take the Hitler
salute as a good joke. Even if the police didn't find out about it, that
wouldn't get you a laugh, only the horrified faces of the other people.
Even after the end of the war, the Third Reich is still taboo, even
though reports about this period appear almost every day on television
and in the newspapers. You can ask many Germans about National Socialism
without any problems, as long as you remain diplomatic. And you should
first know the person better privately and wait for a suitable
opportunity. In business negotiations, the topic should be avoided
completely. Germans also expect no personal accusations. After all,
almost eight decades after the end of the Second World War, relatively
few people survived the Third Reich. Most Germans were not born until
decades after the end of the Third Reich and only know the time from
school lessons or from films.
Many of the German cultural assets are church buildings or buildings of other religious communities that are still used religiously. So for devout visitors they are places of worship. Accordingly, all visitors should behave in a reserved and quiet manner so as not to disturb anyone. Walking around and taking photos during services would be totally inappropriate. Male visitors are expected to remove their head coverings in churches. Shoes are usually removed when entering a mosque. A good opportunity to visit a mosque in Germany even as a non-Muslim is the annual Open Mosque Day on October 3 (national holiday Day of German Unity). When entering synagogues, male visitors should wear a hat. This is usually provided for guided tours. In general, it is important to be quiet and avoid running in cemeteries. While flowers are common in Christian cemeteries, stones are placed on the grave in Jewish cemeteries to symbolize the immortality of memory.
In Germany it is not customary to pronounce
invitations as empty phrases. If you invite Germans to a meal or a
visit, you have to expect that Germans will take you seriously and get
in touch to arrange an appointment.
If you ask for directions in
Germany, you either get a direct answer or the information that the
person addressed does not know the way.
There are also unpunctual
people in Germany. But for Germans, punctuality and reliability are
actually more important than in other countries. If you are more than 15
minutes late for an appointment, you should call and say how many
minutes later you will be there. Anyone who does not show up for an
appointment without an explanation will have a hard time afterwards,
whether in business or private life.
Older Germans, in
particular, seem reserved towards strangers at first. Spontaneous
invitations from strangers home are completely unusual. Younger people
are a bit more relaxed. However, friendships in Germany can last a
lifetime, even over long distances and even if you rarely see each
other.
Spontaneous visits without prior notice are considered
impolite by many in Germany.
Many Germans are not great fans of
small talk, but often get to the topic quickly. The attitude behind it
is that you don't want to waste time with it, neither of others nor your
own. Polite phrases and complicated formulations are also avoided. In
business life in particular, the following often applies: It is meant
exactly as it was said.
While political issues are not a topic
for small talk in any sense, it is more common than anywhere else to
broach political issues among strangers or acquaintances. Most of the
time nobody takes offense when someone has a different opinion, but one
should be careful with opinions that deviate too much from "mainstream",
especially if one does not know how the interlocutor(s) thinks.
Fixed network connections for telephony in Germany are
often already VOIP connections or shared (TV) cable connections. In
addition to the successor to the Bundespost "Deutsche Telekom", other
providers are also active. With regard to the costs for the caller of a
fixed network connection, the provider of the connection of the called
party is irrelevant.
There are several mobile network operators,
each of which basically covers the entire federal territory. How well
this actually happens is a hotly debated topic. At the top, Telekom and
Vodafone fight for number 1, while O2 has gaps in stable network
coverage. In rural areas, all providers have regional problems in
providing fast data transmission. Prepaid cards are widespread and
practical. A minute of domestic calls is between 7 and 9 cents. Some of
the cards are also available as private labels from food discounters
(Aldi, Lidl, Norma), and newsagents and drugstores have a larger
selection of providers. Registration for prepaid SIM cards has been
mandatory since 2017. Non-EU foreigners must present proof of arrival or
residence permits.
In most cities there are internet cafes with
mostly acceptable prices. Compared to other European countries, Germany
lags far behind other countries when it comes to public WiFi. The use of
these hotspots is often chargeable and then mostly prohibitively
expensive. However, the expansion of WLAN hotspots in larger cities is
being pushed ahead quickly. Hotspots, which are usually marked, have
emerged primarily in public buildings, on public squares, in hotels and
isolated cafés and system catering. Deutsche Bahn operates free and
unlimited WiFi in most of the largest train stations. Also in
long-distance trains and, depending on the region, local trains, mostly
free but capped WiFi is now offered. Deutsche Telekom also operates many
WLAN hotspots, but these are only free of charge for 30 minutes a day at
train stations, for example, and sometimes only for a fee in other
places. After the free minutes have expired, a comparatively expensive
time tariff is required.
Postal services are mainly offered by
Deutsche Post, which is obliged to offer a basic service for the whole
of Germany as a so-called universal service. The company, which is
listed on the stock exchange today and one of the successors of the
Deutsche Bundespost, is still 20% federally owned. Today, the branch
network also includes many postal agencies or acceptance points in
newspaper shops or the like. Stamps can also be purchased individually
there. There are now a few other providers who also set up their own
mailboxes for post. Only the yellow mailboxes of the Deutsche Post can
be used for letters and postcards abroad with "the post". Within
Germany, letters usually arrive in 1 to 2 working days. Parcels are
usually delivered within 3 to 4 working days.
Manners
Nudity in public
As in other countries
in Central and Northern Europe, nudity is tolerated or even required in
certain situations in Germany.
Breastfeeding babies is not a
problem, but you should remain discreet. However, some public toilets
also have their own room for this purpose.
On beaches, a
shirtless woman is nothing special. Total nudity of both men and women
is less common, but it does occur and is mostly tolerated. But you have
to reckon with looks. Nude bathing is usually not allowed in public
swimming pools.
In Germany there is a long tradition of nudism,
the Freikörperkultur (FKK). Although this tradition dates back to
Wilhelmine times, nudism was particularly popular in the GDR and there
is still a certain East-West divide today. Followers of nudism go to
special nudist beaches or nudist campsites. Here you have to B. not be
constantly undressed in the cold. However, people who do not want to
undress at all are not welcome here. It is customary for naked people to
always put a towel underneath when sitting. Anyone who secretly takes
photos of naked people in areas that are protected from view commits a
criminal offense and faces imprisonment.
Many natural beaches are
mixed, where everyone is free to choose whether or not to be nude. Here
the rule usually applies: in the central areas you bathe fully clothed,
in more remote places it is up to you.
This nudism has nothing to
do with sexual acts. Having sex in public is usually classified as
"indecent behavior" and is therefore a criminal offence.
It is
important for foreigners to know that the words "FKK" and "Saunaclub"
are often used in advertisements for prostitution. For Germans it is
usually easy to distinguish this from simple nudism, strangers should be
careful not to confuse this.
It is common in Germany for men and women to go to the sauna together. In some sauna areas there is one day or one period per week that is reserved for women, less often also for men. Sauna areas are usually naked areas, unlike in some other countries you go completely unclothed into the sauna or steam room, you only have to take a towel with you to sit or lie down (motto: no sweat on the wood). Not even that in the steam bath, here you wash the place afterwards with cold water hoses. By law, however, this regulation is left to the respective operator of the sauna (hotel owner or pool operator) through the domiciliary rights. Therefore, on rare occasions, he may choose to remain in bathing suits. If the operator prescribes unclothed sauna bathing in his bathing rules, you must expect to be expelled from the room if you do not comply. If you are unsure, you should read notices or ask the staff.
Germany is now considered a tolerant country when it comes to homosexuality. Legal restrictions have been abolished in recent decades. Marriage has also been open to homosexual couples since October 1, 2017, although “registered civil partnership” (“homosexual marriage”) had existed for a long time beforehand. Homosexuality is socially accepted in large parts of the population. Last but not least, there were and are many recognized famous and successful homosexuals in many areas, including politics and business. Violent attacks on homosexuals are relatively rare and are consistently prosecuted by the police and the judiciary.
Anyone from service-oriented countries such as If you
come to the USA, for example, you will soon notice that self-help,
do-it-yourself and improvisation are popular in Germany in some areas.
For travelers, this applies in particular to washing clothes. Hotels
usually do not have coin-operated washing machines for their guests, and
laundromats with coin-operated washing machines are usually only found
in large cities.
On the other hand, there are a large number of
dry cleaners in Germany; before you unload your dirty things there, it
is advisable to ask in advance what it will cost.
Incidentally,
the locals hardly see this service gap as a problem because they
traditionally help themselves in three ways: pack enough clothes from
the start; wearing outerwear for several days in a row; Small hand
washes in the hotel room in between (the travel detergent Rei in a tube
has been a legendary must-have in Germany since the 1950s).
The etymological precursors of German originally meant
"belonging to the people", with the adjective initially denoting the
dialects of the continental-West Germanic dialect continuum. The term
Germany has been used since the 15th century, but is attested in
individual documents even earlier; in the Frankfurt translation of the
Golden Bull (around 1365) it is called Dutschelant. Before that, only
word additions of the attribute German are occupied with country, for
example in the indefinite singular form "a German country" or the
definite plural form "the German countries", but not in the definite
singular form "the German country". What was meant were countries with a
ruling class that referred to the political claim to power of the (East)
Franconians, from the 10th century of the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806).
The designation was thus primarily used for (pre-)state structures in
the German-speaking or dominion area, which had undergone major changes
over the centuries.
The Holy Roman Empire, originally only
referred to as "Reich" (Latin Imperium), received several suffixes:
"Holy" since the mid-12th century, "Roman" since the mid-13th century
and since the late 15th century "German nation". " (Holy Roman Empire of
the German Nation). It was not until the 16th century that the term
"Teutschland" came into use for the previously so-called "German
states". Equating Reich and Germany soon became established in
contemporary literature, and these were eventually used as synonyms
(e.g. by the Halle lawyer Johann Peter von Ludewig in 1735).
An
awareness that not the respective territorial state but Germany as a
whole was to be regarded as the fatherland only began to spread during
the Napoleonic Wars. Friedrich Schiller, for example, had previously
made a strict distinction in the Xenien in 1797 between an intellectual
and a political Germany, which had no overlap: “Germany, but where is
it? I do not find the country. Where the learned begins, the political
ends.” He rejected the possibility of the latter: “To form yourselves
into a nation, you hope so, Germans, in vain.” German greatness (that’s
the title of an unfinished poem from 1801 ) he saw only in the
spiritual. As late as 1813, Achim von Arnim spoke of Germany as a
“hollow word ideal”, to which he contrasted “everything glorious about
the individual German peoples” (in the plural).
A political
understanding of the name Germany initially only came from a small group
of intellectuals and politicians such as Ernst Moritz Arndt, Friedrich
Ludwig Jahn, Johann Gottlieb Fichte or Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und
zum Stein, but it had a significant mobilizing effect as early as the
wars of liberation. The Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia also
referred positively to Germany: Archduke Karl von Austria-Teschen issued
an appeal to the German nation in 1809 at the beginning of the Fifth
Coalition War, in which he assured: "Our cause is Germany's cause". The
Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. announced in the proclamation of
Kalisch on March 19, 1813 "to the princes and peoples of Germany the
return of freedom and independence". This Germany was defined as the
German language area (Arndt: Des Deutschen Vaterland, 1813; similarly in
1841 Hoffmann von Fallersleben's Song of the Germans). It was no longer
understood as an empire but as a nation; In the decades that followed,
the German national movement advocated the consolidation of all German
territories into one nation state. This initially failed, at the
Congress of Vienna in 1814/15 the territorial states were instead
restored and combined in a confederation of states, the German
Confederation. This was also referred to as Germany, but included some
majority non-German speaking territories such as Bohemia and Moravia
while excluding other majority German speaking areas such as East
Prussia. Nevertheless, the national movement initially remained an elite
project. It only had a mass impact during the Rhine Crisis in 1840.
From the founding of the Reich in 1871, a change in meaning began,
from Germany as a cultural nation to a state designation, with a
geographical restriction to today's area:
The Austrian Empire did
not become part of the German Empire in 1871. However, the
German-speaking residents of Austria continued to see themselves as
Germans. When the multi-ethnic state collapsed at the end of the First
World War, the German-Austrians wanted to join the German Reich.
However, this was prohibited by the peace treaty. This is how different
national identities began to develop. The terms German and Germany were
increasingly identified only with the German Empire. This process was
initially interrupted when Austria was annexed to the German Reich in
1938 under National Socialist rule. The distancing from National
Socialism after the Second World War led in Austria to distancing
themselves from the concept of Germany and to the consolidation of their
own national identity for Austrians. In the course of the political
reorganization of the continuing state as a whole, the Parliamentary
Council in West Germany rejected the continuation of the state name
Deutsches Reich because of its "aggressive accent" and used Germany as
the state name for the first time in the then constituted "Federal
Republic of Germany". In the deliberations, Theodor Heuss said in 1948:
"With the word Germany we give the whole thing a certain pathos ... of a
sentimental and not a power-political nature." The German Democratic
Republic (GDR) did not use Germany in its state name, but as a synonym
for GDR in Art. 1 of the 1949 constitution. Later, the GDR almost
exclusively used the attribute German or the suffix "... of the GDR" for
state designations of sovereignty. With German unity in 1990, Germany
was able to become the official short form of the state designation.
The major natural regions are from north to south: the North German lowlands, the low mountain range and the foothills of the Alps with the Alps.
Geologically, Germany belongs to Western Europe, i.e. to that
part of the continent that was successively annexed to the Precambrian
consolidated "Ur-Europa" (Eastern Europe including a large part of
Scandinavia, cf. Baltica) only in the course of the Phanerozoic through
continent-continent collisions (mountain formations). became. The
corresponding crustal provinces (basic mountain range provinces) are
simply called (eastern) Avalonia (cf. Caledonian mountain formation) and
Armorica (cf. Variscan mountain formation). The youngest crustal
province is the Alpine-Carpathian orogen (cf. Alpine orogeny), in which
Germany only has a share with the extreme south of Bavaria and which, in
contrast to the other two tectonic provinces, represents an active
orogen.
Today's surface geology of Germany, i.e. the pattern of
rock complexes of different ages and structures, as is often shown on
geological maps, only developed over the course of the last 30 to 20
million years in the younger Cenozoic and was significantly shaped by
two events: the Alpidic Mountain building and the Quaternary Ice Age.
The Quaternary Ice Age formed the comparatively monotonous surface
geology of northern Germany and the foothills of the Alps with their
moraine deposits and other side effects of large-scale glaciation (cf.
glacial series).
The surface geology of central and most of
southern Germany is the result of significant fracture tectonic uplift
and subsidence, which can be traced back to the long-distance effects of
the Alpid mountain formation. Some old (predominantly Paleozoic),
Variscan folded bedrock complexes (slate mountains and crystalline) were
lifted out of the subsoil and exposed over large areas (e.g. Rhenish
Slate Mountains, Harz Mountains, Ore Mountains), some of the earth's
crust sank and formed sedimentation spaces, the more or less thick
Cenozoic sediment sequences recordings (Upper Rhine Graben, Lower Rhine
Graben, Hessian Depression, Molasse Basin). The tablelands with their
unfolded Mesozoic strata, dominated by the Triassic and Jurassic
(Thuringian Basin, southern German strata), occupy an intermediate
tectonic position.
The geologically young folded
mountains of the Alps are the only high mountains in which Germany has a
share. The German Alps, which are located entirely in the federal state
of Bavaria, have the only mountain peaks with more than 2000 m above sea
level. NHN on. The summit of the Zugspitze (2962 m above sea level),
which Germany shares with Austria, is the highest point in the country.
The German low mountain ranges extend from the northern edge of the
low mountain range to the edge of the Alps and the Upper Rhine with Lake
Constance. They tend to increase in height and extent from north to
south. The highest low mountain peak is the Feldberg in the Black Forest
(1493 m above sea level), followed by the Großer Arber in the Bavarian
Forest (1456 m above sea level). Peaks over 1000 m above sea level NHN
also own the Ore Mountains, the Fichtel Mountains, the Swabian Jura and
the Harz, which is quite isolated as the northernmost of the highest
German low mountain ranges with the Brocken at 1141 m above sea level.
NHN raises. North of the low mountain range, only a few mountains within
the Ice Age terminal moraines reach more than 100 m above sea level.
NHN, of which the Heidehöhe in Schraden (southern ridge in the
Brandenburg-Saxon border area) with 201 m above sea level. NN is the
highest.
The deepest generally accessible state office in Germany
is 3.54 m below sea level in a depression near Neuendorf-Sachsenbande in
the Wilstermarsch (Schleswig-Holstein). The deepest crypto-depression is
also in this federal state: It is 39.6 m below sea level at the bottom
of Lake Hemmelsdorf northeast of Lübeck. The deepest artificially
created terrain point is 267 m below sea level at the bottom of the
Hambach opencast mine east of Jülich in North Rhine-Westphalia.
See also: List of the highest mountains in Germany and List of mountain
ranges and ridges in Germany
Germany belongs entirely to the moderate climate zone
of Central Europe in the area of the westerly wind zone and is located
in the transition area between the maritime climate in Western Europe
and the continental climate in Eastern Europe. The climate in Germany is
influenced, among other things, by the Gulf Stream, which means that the
average temperature level is unusually high for the latitude.
The
average annual temperature, based on the normal period 1961–1990,[28] is
8.2 °C nationwide, the average monthly average temperatures are between
−0.5 °C in January and 16.9 °C in July. The mean annual precipitation is
789 millimeters. The average monthly amount of precipitation is between
49 millimeters in February and 85 millimeters in June.
The lowest
officially recognized temperature measured in Germany was −37.8 °C; it
was registered in Wolnzach in 1929. The highest temperature so far was
41.2 °C and was measured on July 25, 2019 in Duisburg-Baerl and in
Tönisvorst on the Lower Rhine.
Of the six
rivers with the largest catchment areas, the Rhine, Elbe, Weser and Ems
drain via the North Sea and the Oder via the Baltic Sea into the
Atlantic, while the Danube flows into the Black Sea and is therefore
hydrographically part of the Mediterranean. The catchment areas of these
two systems are separated from each other by the main European
watershed.
The Rhine, which has its source in Switzerland,
dominates the southwest and west. It flows 865 kilometers through or
along the border with Germany before it flows into the North Sea via the
Netherlands. Its main German tributaries are the Neckar, Main, Moselle
and Ruhr. The Rhine is of great economic importance and is one of the
busiest waterways in Europe. In the south, the Danube drains almost the
entire German Alpine foothills over a distance of 647 kilometers and
flows on to Austria and south-eastern Europe. Its most important German
tributaries are the Iller, Lech, Isar and Inn. The Elbe, which has its
source in the Czech Republic, flows 725 kilometers through eastern
Germany. Its main German tributaries are the Saale and Havel. At 179
kilometers, the Oder, as well as its most important tributary, the
Neisse, is the border river to Poland. Only the catchment area of the
452 km long Weser lies entirely in Germany. It is fed by the rivers
Werra and Fulda and drains the central north. The Ems flows 371
kilometers through the extreme north-west of the country. Your catchment
area also extends to parts of the Netherlands.
The natural lakes
are predominantly of glacial origin. Therefore, most of the large lakes
can be found in the foothills of the Alps, in Holstein Switzerland and
in Mecklenburg. The largest lake that is completely part of German
territory is the Müritz, which is part of the Mecklenburg Lake District.
The largest lake with a German portion is Lake Constance, which also
borders Austria and Switzerland. In the west and east of Germany there
are many artificial lakes, such as the Leipziger Neuseenland or the
Dortmunder Phoenix-See, which were created by the recultivation of brown
coal mines or brownfield sites.
The Frisian Islands are located in the Wadden Sea,
just off the Dutch, German and Danish North Sea coast. While the North
Frisian Islands are remnants of land separated from the coast by land
subsidence and subsequent flooding, the East Frisian Islands are barrier
islands formed from sediments washed up by coast-parallel currents and
wave and tidal dynamics. Located in the middle of the German Bight,
Heligoland is the most distant inhabited German island from the
mainland. It goes back to the rise of a salt dome in the subsoil of the
North Sea.
The largest German islands in the Baltic Sea are (from
west to east) Fehmarn, Poel, Hiddensee, Rügen and Usedom. Rügen is also
the largest German island. The largest peninsula is
Fischland-Darß-Zingst. With the exception of Fehmarn, these land areas
are part of a Bodden coast, i.e. a ground moraine landscape that was
flooded after the Ice Age and subsequently modified by landing
processes.
The largest and best-known islands in inland waters
are Reichenau, Mainau and Lindau in Lake Constance and Herreninsel in
Lake Chiemsee.
The natural region of Germany lies in the
cool-temperate climate zone; from west to east, its natural vegetation
marks the transition from the west side sea climate to the continental
climate. Without human influence, the flora would be characterized
mainly by deciduous and mixed forests, with the exception of
nutrient-poor or dry locations such as rocky outcrops, lowland heaths
and moorland, as well as the alpine and subalpine highlands, which are
extremely poor in vegetation and have a climate similar to the
cold-temperate climate zone.
Locally, the flora in Germany shows
a high degree of diversification due to location factors of the terrain
and the mesoclimatic situation. The total stock of wild plant species in
Germany is estimated at over 9,500 species, of which almost 3,000
species are seed plants, 74 fern plants, over 1,000 mosses and around
3,000 diatoms. There are also around 14,000 types of fungus and 373
types of slime mold. A number of introduced species such as black locust
and Himalayan balsam can be found today, particularly on fallow and
disturbed areas.
Forests currently cover around 30 percent of the
land area in Germany. This makes Germany one of the most densely
forested countries in the European Union. The current tree species
composition corresponds only to a small extent to the natural conditions
and is mainly determined by forestry. The most common tree species are
the Norway spruce with 26.0 percent of the area, followed by the Scots
pine with 22.9 percent, the common beech with 15.8 percent and the oak
with 10.6 percent.
Around half of the state area is used for
agriculture; According to the Federal Statistical Office, it was 182,637
square kilometers on December 31, 2016. In addition to being used as
permanent grassland, most of it is used for arable farming, since the
Stone Age and the Bronze Age, mainly with crops that do not occur
naturally in Central Europe (most of the grain types from the Middle
East, potatoes and corn from America). In the river valleys, including
those of the Main, Moselle, Ahr and Rhine, the landscape was often
redesigned for winegrowing.
In Germany, the preservation of
nature is a public task and a state goal enshrined in Art. 20a of the
Basic Law. 16 national parks (see national parks in Germany), 19
biosphere reserves, 105 nature parks and thousands of nature reserves,
landscape protection areas and natural monuments serve to protect
nature.
Around 48,000 animal species have been identified in
Germany, including 104 mammals, 328 birds, 13 reptiles, 22 amphibians
and 197 fish species, as well as over 33,000 insect species, which puts
the country "on the basis of geological development and geographical
location among the areas with fewer species". counts. These species
include over 1,000 crustaceans, almost 3,800 arachnids, 635 molluscs and
over 5,300 other invertebrates.
The wild mammals native to
Germany include deer, wild boar, red and fallow deer as well as foxes,
martens and lynxes. Beavers and otters are rare inhabitants of the river
meadows, with populations increasing again in some cases. Alpine ibex,
alpine marmots and chamois live in the Bavarian Alps; the latter can
also be found in various low mountain ranges. Other large mammals that
lived in what is now Germany in earlier times were exterminated: wild
horses, aurochs (15th century), bison (16th century), brown bear (19th
century), wolf (19th century), elk ( 20th century). While moose
occasionally migrate from neighboring countries today, wolves coming
from Poland have firmly established themselves in Germany again and gave
birth to offspring for the first time around the turn of the millennium.
In 2018 there were 73 proven wolf packs in Germany, most of which live
in the states of Saxony, Brandenburg and Lower Saxony. In 2013 a herd of
bison was released into the wild in the Rothaar Mountains. In October
2019, a brown bear that was probably immigrated from Italy was
photographed by a wildlife camera in the district of
Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In the months that followed, the animal was
repeatedly found again. Already in 2006 a bear had immigrated to Germany
with the “problem bear” Bruno. In the meantime, lynxes that were
originally native to this area are now living in Germany again, albeit
in low population densities because they are repeatedly victims of
poaching and road traffic.
exterminated bearded vultures from
Switzerland and Austria are returning. The most common birds of prey
today are buzzards and kestrel, the population of peregrine falcons is
significantly lower. More than half of the total population of red kites
breeds in Germany, but is declining due to intensive agriculture. On the
other hand, many birds as cultural successors benefit from the presence
of humans, in particular urban pigeons, blackbirds (former forest
birds), sparrows and tits, which also survive through winter feeding, as
well as crows and gulls on rubbish dumps. The Wadden Sea is a resting
place for ten to twelve million migratory birds per year.
The
salmon that used to be common in the rivers was largely eradicated in
the course of industrialization, but was reintroduced to the Rhine in
the 1980s. In Germany, the last sturgeon was caught in 1969. The carp
introduced by the Romans are kept in many ponds. The common and gray
seal species, which were almost exterminated by professional fishermen
in the middle of the 20th century as competitors for prey and are now
protected - the latter being the largest predator native to Germany -
are now again represented by several thousand specimens on the German
coasts. Eight species of whales occur in the North and Baltic Seas,
including the harbor porpoise and one species of dolphin, the common
dolphin.
The species-poor reptile fauna includes, for example,
grass snake, adder, sand lizard and the endangered European pond turtle.
Amphibians such as salamanders, frogs, toads, toads and newts are all
protected species in Germany, and half of the approximately 20 species
are on the national Red List of Threatened Species.
The – partly
invasive – neozoa in Germany (introduced animal species) include
raccoons, raccoon dogs, muskrat, coypu, ring-necked parakeets, Canada
goose and Egyptian goose.
Germany has a total of nine neighboring countries:
Germany borders Denmark in the north, Poland in the north-east, the
Czech Republic in the east, Austria in the south-east, Switzerland in
the south, France in the south-west, Luxembourg and Belgium in the west
and Belgium in the north-west the Netherlands. The border length is 3876
kilometers in total.
In Germany, a total of 51 percent of the
land area is used for agriculture (2016), forests cover another 30
percent. 14 percent is used as settlement and traffic area. Water
surfaces account for two percent, the remaining three percent are spread
over other areas, mostly wasteland and opencast mines.
administrative division
The federally structured Federal Republic
consists of 16 member states, which are officially referred to as
countries (federal states). The city-states of Berlin and Hamburg each
consist of unified municipalities of the same name, while the Free
Hanseatic City of Bremen, as the third city-state, comprises two
separate municipalities, Bremen and Bremerhaven. In contrast to other
federal states, there are no federal areas in Germany.
The
municipalities are the smallest democratically constituted, legally
independent regional authorities and administrative units in Germany.
Due to their cooperative character, which goes back to the Middle Ages,
they have a long tradition. Today, the municipalities in Germany, with
the exception of the city-states and most urban districts, are grouped
together in rural districts and other municipal associations. There are
400 regional authorities at district level, of which 294 are districts
and 106 are urban districts. They are subdivided into a total of 10,790
municipalities (as of January 2021), with a downward trend, and more
than 200 mostly uninhabited unincorporated areas. Districts and
municipalities are subject to the municipal constitutional law of the
respective federal state and are therefore organized differently
nationwide. The rural district is thus both a supra-local municipal
authority and a lower state administrative authority. It has its own
representative body, the district council (Article 28(1) sentence 2 of
the Basic Law), and performs various “supra-local community” tasks for
the municipalities belonging to the district.
Under
constitutional law, the municipalities are part of the federal states,
which means that they are subject to their supervisory and directive
rights and therefore do not have their own state sovereignty. The
self-government guarantee of Art. 28 Para. 2 GG - on the one hand a
so-called institutional legal subject guarantee, from which it follows
that there must be municipalities in the state structure at all, on the
other hand a subjective public right with constitutional status -
distinguishes between the municipalities, which are granted this right
in full, and the municipal associations (districts), to which it is only
granted in a graduated form. As a result, there is a clear
rule/exception relationship in favor of the municipalities (principle of
subsidiarity) for the demarcation of tasks between municipalities and
counties. With regard to “matters of the local community”, i.e. the
authority guaranteed in Art. 28 (2) sentence 1 GG to conduct business
independently in this area (so-called objective legal institutional
guarantee), the Federal Constitutional Court has the priority of the
municipal level over the district level in accordance with the
provisions of the laws: According to this, the principle of
"'universality' of the municipal sphere of activity" applies to cities
and municipalities "as essentials" and "identity-determining feature of
municipal self-government", in contrast to the special competence of
municipal associations by virtue of express legal assignment, which
means that there is no fixed community association sovereignties.
In Germany, densely populated areas and
conurbations (agglomerations) are not statistically defined precisely.
There are 81 major cities (100,000 or more inhabitants), 14 of which
have more than 500,000 inhabitants, mostly in western and southwestern
Germany for historical reasons. These agglomerations running along the
Rhine form the middle part of the central European population
concentration (Blue Banana). Most agglomerations are monocentric, while
the Ruhr area is a (polycentric) conurbation. With its numerous centers,
Germany, unlike its neighbors Austria with its capital Vienna and
Denmark with Copenhagen, does not have a primate city. Despite the large
number of large cities, slightly less than a third (26.6 million) of
Germany's inhabitants lived in large cities as of December 31, 2020.
On the territory of Germany, eleven European metropolitan regions
were defined by the Ministerial Conference for Regional Planning. These
go far beyond the corresponding agglomerations.
Cologne/Düsseldorf/Dortmund/Essen belong to the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan
region, Leipzig/Halle/Chemnitz to the central German metropolitan
region. Another is the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region around
Ludwigshafen/Mannheim/Heidelberg.
According to the update of the 2011
census, 83,190,556 people lived in Germany on September 30, 2020 in an
area of 357,381 square kilometers. With almost 233 people per square
kilometer, the country is one of the densely populated area states. In
2020, 50.7 percent of the population were women and 49.3 percent were
men. In 2019, 18.4 percent of residents were under 20 years old, 24.6
percent were between 20 and 40 years old, and 28.4 percent were between
40 and 60 years old. 21.7 percent of the population was between the ages
of 60 and 80, and 6.8 percent were older. In 2019, the average age was
44.5 years. Germany is thus one of the oldest societies in the world.
In addition to the family as the most commonly desired form of
living together, many life models are represented in German society. The
number of live births was 737,575 in 2015, the highest number in 15
years. This corresponds to a birth rate of 1.50 children per woman or
9.6 births per 1,000 inhabitants. During the same period, 925,200 deaths
were registered, about 11.2 cases per 1,000 inhabitants. In 2021, the
birth rate per woman increased to 1.58 children.
Because the
death rate has been higher than the birth rate every year since 1972,
political orientation towards a family-friendly, child- and
young-promoting society with large families (pronatalism) is being
sought. Experts consider the compatibility of family and career to be a
central prerequisite for this. With persistently low birth rates,
especially in sections of the population with middle and higher
educational qualifications, social, economic and geopolitical problems
were predicted for Germany (as of 2012).
Around 72.650 million
people in Germany held German citizenship as of September 30, 2020. This
corresponds to 87.33 percent of the resident population. In 2017, around
18.9 million people had a migration background (23%). In the 2011
census, all foreigners and all Germans who immigrated to what is now the
Federal Republic of Germany after 1955 or who had at least one parent
who immigrated after 1955 counted as people with a migration background.
Among them, the Aussiedler and Spätaussiedler form the largest group,
followed by citizens of Turkey, other countries of the European Union
and the former Yugoslavia. Between 1950 and 2002, a total of 4.3 million
people, either born in the country or long-dwelling residents, were
naturalized on their own application.
In 2017, the German
Economic Institute (IW) predicted that Germany's population would
continue to grow as a result of immigration and would reach around 83.1
million people in 2035. In 2018, the German population grew by 227,000
inhabitants, which means that Germany exceeded the mark of 83 million
inhabitants. In 2019, it grew by 147,000 people (+0.2%) to 83.2 million.
At the end of September 2020, the population was 83,190,556. In 2022,
the population of Germany exceeded 84 million for the first time.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, it was 84,080,000
inhabitants on June 30, 2022.
Germany has been considered a de
facto immigration country for years. In 2020, around 220,000 more people
moved in than out.
Traditions
Like the majority of Western and Central
Europe, today's Germany has been shaped by Western Christianity since
late antiquity and has been shaped by enlightened science since the 18th
century. This is based on influences from ancient Greek and Roman
culture as well as Jewish and Christian traditions, which had mixed with
Germanic traditions since the beginning of the Christianization of
Northwest Europe, from around the 4th century. The area of Germany has
been Christianized since the early Middle Ages. In the Frankish period,
in the empire of Charlemagne, missionary work was completed, partly
through coercion. With Martin Luther posting his theses in 1517, the
Christian Reformation began and subsequently the formation of Protestant
denominations, which shaped the religious landscape in Germany alongside
the Catholic denomination.
Relationship between state and
religion
Art. 4 of the Basic Law guarantees freedom of religion in
Germany, individually as a basic right and institutionally in the
relationship between religion and state. Thus the ideological neutrality
of the state and the right of self-determination of the religious
communities are codified. On this basis, the relationship between
religious communities and the state is based on partnership; So there is
no strict separation of church and state, but in many social and
school-cultural areas there are interdependencies, for example through a
church, but state co-financed sponsorship of kindergartens, schools,
hospitals or nursing homes. Some German parties also refer to the
country's Christian tradition. The Christian churches have the status of
official churches and are corporations under public law, but sui generis
due to the applicable state church law. As religious societies under
public law, the churches should be granted certain organizational
options without being subject to state supervision; instead, the
church's public mandate is partly recognized in church contracts with
the states or the corresponding regulations in the state constitutions,
and the special, original church power is legally affirmed. Certain
Christian churches and Jewish communities levy a church tax, which the
state collects in return for an expense allowance and forwards it to the
respective churches or to the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Furthermore, according to the Basic Law, religious education is an
optional but regular subject in public schools (with the exception of
Bremen, Berlin and Brandenburg). This subject is often taught by a
representative of one of the two major churches.
About 53 percent of the population belong to a
Christian denomination: the Roman Catholic Church 26 percent
(predominantly in western and southern Germany), the Evangelical Church
(Lutheran, Reformed and Uniate) 24 percent (tendency mainly in northern
Germany); other Christian churches such as the orthodox and ancient
oriental churches, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the New Apostolic Church and
the free churches altogether about 3 percent. The number of churchgoers
is significantly lower than the number of church members. On the
so-called counting Sundays (second Sunday in Lent and second Sunday in
November) in 2016, 2.4 million people (2.9% of the total population)
attended the Catholic services and 0.8 million (1%) those of the
Protestant church. Significantly more people take part in church
services on high church holidays, especially on Christmas Eve. About 42
percent of the population is non-denominational. In the new federal
states, the proportion of non-denominational and non-Christians is well
over 70 percent. The GDR propagated and conveyed an atheistic world view
(see youth consecration) and encouraged people to leave the church. Due
to long-term processes of secularization and the change in values, the
proportion of non-religious people in the total population also
increased in the old Federal Republic (1970: 3.9%; 1987: 11.4%). This
development has continued in the united Germany.
At the end of
2015, around 4.5 million Muslims lived in Germany. They make up about
5.5 percent of the total population. More than half have a Turkish
migration background, a good 17 percent come from the rest of the Near
East. Between 2011 and 2015, 1.2 million Muslims came to Germany. The
Coordinating Council of Muslims in Germany was founded as the umbrella
organization for the many Islamic organizations and contact persons for
outsiders.
The German Buddhist Union assumes that there are
around 270,000 Buddhists in Germany. Half of them are immigrant Asians.
This corresponds to 0.3 percent of the population.
About 200,000
Jews live in Germany, which corresponds to 0.25 percent of the
population. About half of them are organized in Jewish communities.
Since the 1990s, there has been a strong increase in immigrants from the
former Eastern Bloc countries, above all from Ukraine and Russia.
Syrian Christianity is a constantly growing Christian denomination
in Germany with around 130,000 members due to the continuous influx of
Assyrians from Mesopotamia. Of these, around 100,000 Assyrians belong to
the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch.
The oldest
fossil evidence of the presence of the Homo genus on German territory -
the lower jaw of Mauer - is around 500,000 years old. It was named Homo
heidelbergensis after its location near Heidelberg. The Schöninger
spears, which are at least 300,000 years old, are the oldest fully
preserved hunting weapons known to mankind and have revolutionized the
image of the cultural and social development of early humans.
The
Neanderthals, named after a site in the Neandertal east of Düsseldorf,
were followed about 40,000 years ago by Homo sapiens, the anatomically
modern human, who immigrated from Africa. Although the Neanderthals
disappeared, it has recently been shown that both had at least some
descendants in common. The Upper Palaeolithic cabaret is the oldest
known art of mankind.
Neolithic farmers coming from the Near
East, who migrated with their cattle and crops via Anatolia and the
Balkans (Linear Pottery makers), displaced from about 5700/5600 BC. the
hunters and gatherers of the Mesolithic from the southern half of
Germany. Only around 4000 BC. BC the appropriating cultures of hunters,
gatherers and fishermen were replaced by peasant cultures, which were
now consistently sedentary, in northern Germany as well; the last
culture of hunters in northern Germany is the Ertebølle culture.
The Bronze Age began on German territory around 2200 BC with a delay of
more than 1000 years. The Nebra Sky Disc is one of their most important
finds. At the beginning of the Hallstatt period (1200–1000 BC), southern
and central Germany were settled by Celts, and iron began to assert
itself as the most important metal. Around 600 BC the Jastorf culture,
which is regarded as a Germanic culture, developed in northern Germany.
The term "Teutons" (Latin Germani) was coined in the 1st century BC.
first mentioned by ancient authors. This is an ethnographic, less
precise collective term which, for methodological reasons, should not be
misunderstood as a designation for a uniform people.
From 58 B.C.
455 AD, the areas to the left of the Rhine and south of the Danube
belonged to the Roman Empire, from around 80 to 260 AD also part of
Hesse and most of today's Baden-Württemberg south of the Limes. These
Roman territories were divided into the provinces of Gallia Belgica,
Germania superior, Germania inferior, Raetia and Noricum. There the
Romans established legionary camps, a number of cities such as Trier,
Cologne, Augsburg and Mainz - the oldest cities in Germany. Allied
Germanic tribes secured these provinces, and settlers from other parts
of the empire also settled here.
The part of the Germanic
settlement area outside the Roman provinces of Germania Inferior and
Germania Superior was called Germania magna by the Romans in the early
and high imperial period and in late antiquity.
Attempts to
expand the sphere of influence further into this Germanic area failed
with the Battle of Varus in 9 AD. Roman efforts to establish provinces
up to the Elbe finally ended. Tacitus' Germania, written in 98 at the
earliest, is the oldest description of the Germanic tribes.
After the invasion of the
Huns around 375, the migration of peoples began. At the same time,
several large tribes emerged in the transition from late antiquity to
the early Middle Ages, namely the Franks, Alamanni, Saxons, Bavarians
and Thuringians. In this context, the complex process of ethnogenesis of
the different gentes (tribes) is important in recent research. The
emergence of ethnic identities (ethnicity) in late antiquity or the
beginning of the early Middle Ages in connection with the so-called
migration of peoples is no longer understood as a biological category.
Rather, identities emerge in a changing social process in which several
factors play a role.
The goal of the groups that penetrated the
empire was above all a share in the prosperity of the empire, whose
structures and culture they did not want to destroy. However, the
subsequent military conflicts and internal Roman power struggles led to
a process of political erosion in the western empire. In the course of
the fall of the Western Empire (the last emperor in Italy was deposed in
476), Germanic-Roman successor empires were formed on the soil of the
western empire. The Eastern Roman Empire ("Byzantium"), on the other
hand, continued to exist until 1453 and continued to maintain contacts
with the West.
In the 7th century, Slavic tribes immigrated to
the largely depopulated areas of today's East Germany. They were only
assimilated in the course of the high medieval Ostsiedlung. Western and
Central Europe was dominated by the Frankish Empire that emerged at the
end of the 5th century, and today's northern Germany by the Saxons and
Slavs. All of the areas of the Frankish kingdom that now belong to
Germany were in the eastern part of Austrasia. Under the Merovingians,
however, there were repeated dynastic conflicts.
In the middle of
the 8th century, Pippin the Younger from the Carolingian dynasty
succeeded the Merovingians who had ruled until then in the Frankish
kingdom. After the Saxons had been subjugated and proselytized, and
Charlemagne had conquered Italy, northern Spain and the eastern border
area, the multi-ethnic empire was reorganized. Church organization and
cultural promotion were partially based on Roman traditions (Carolingian
Renaissance). At Christmas 800, Charlemagne had himself crowned emperor
by the pope in Rome and thus laid claim to the successorship of the
Roman Empire (translatio imperii), which led to competition with the
Byzantine emperors (two-emperor problem). After Charlemagne's death in
814, there were fights among his descendants, which led to a tripartite
division of the empire in 843 in the Treaty of Verdun into East Francia
under "Louis the German", West Francia and Lotharingia.
In the
East Franconian Empire, five large duchies developed around 900, namely
the tribal duchies of Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia and Lorraine.
The Carolingian dynasty died out in both West and East Franconia in the
10th century, and from then on the two parts of the empire remained
politically separate. The Battle of Lechfeld in 955 ended decades of
Hungarian invasions, led to a gain in prestige for King Otto, who was
crowned Emperor in Rome in 962, and to the assignment of the Archangel
Michael as the patron saint of the Germans.
The Ottonian dynasty was essential for
the formation of the East Frankish Empire, but it is no longer
considered the beginning of the actual "German" imperial history.
Rather, the associated process dragged on at least until the 11th
century. The term regnum Teutonicorum ("Kingdom of the Germans") first
appears in the sources at the beginning of the 11th century, but it was
never the title of the kingdom (imperium), but served the popes to
relativize the claim to power of the Roman-German kings.
In 951,
Otto I assumed the Longobard kingship. This connected the Regnum
Teutonicum with Imperial Italy. In 962 Otto was crowned emperor, thus
combining the Roman-German royal dignity with the claim to the western
“Roman” empire (idea of empire). This Roman-German Empire occupied a
hegemonic position in western Europe under the Ottonians. In 1024, the
Salians became kings, which until the end of the Middle Ages was always
linked to an election by various greats of the empire.
The way in
which secular and spiritual power were interlocked is sometimes called
the "Reichskirchensystem". The question of who was allowed to appoint
bishops led to the Investiture Controversy with the Reformed Papacy, to
Canossa in 1077 and to the interim solution of the Worms Concordat in
1122. The dispute between Emperor and Pope reached a climax in the
Staufer period, especially under Frederick II German part of the empire
on many regalia. With his death in 1250, the Hohenstaufen kingdom
collapsed; the interregnum that followed increased the power of the
princes. The empire continued to exist as a political ordering factor,
but increasingly lost its influence on the European level.
Numerous feudal regimes became independent in the form of territorial
states at the expense of royal-imperial power, which was never strong
and therefore relied on consensual rule with the greats of the empire.
Emperor Henry VI At the end of the 12th century, the attempt to
introduce the hereditary monarchy through the hereditary plan had
failed. While the West Frankish Empire developed into the French central
state, the East Franconian or Roman-German Empire remained characterized
by sovereigns and the right to elect kings.
In the middle of the
13th century in the Holy Roman Empire - the term Sacrum Imperium (Holy
Empire) was already used in 1157, Sacrum Imperium Romanum (Holy Roman
Empire) is first documented in 1184 (older research assumed 1254) - the
view that a college of electors is entitled to elect the king, which was
made binding by the Golden Bull of 1356. The empire thus formally
remained an elective monarchy until its end in 1806. Although the
emperors repeatedly tried to strengthen their position, the empire
remained a supranational federation of many different sized territories
and imperial cities.
The late medieval 14th and 15th centuries
were characterized by elective monarchy: three large families – the
Habsburgs, the Luxemburgers and the Wittelsbachs – had the greatest
influence in the empire and the greatest domestic power. The most
important king is Charles IV, who operated a skilful home power policy.
Despite crises such as the plague (Black Death), the agrarian crisis and
the western schism, cities and trade flourished; the transition to the
Renaissance began. In the empire, the Habsburgs inherited the
Luxembourgers, who died out in the male line in 1437, and almost
continuously provided the Roman-German rulers until the end of the
empire. Through clever politics, the Habsburgs secured additional
territories in the empire and even the Spanish royal crown: Habsburg
thus rose to become a major European power.
At the turn of the
16th century, Emperor Maximilian I carried out a comprehensive imperial
reform that strengthened the Imperial Diet, jurisdiction (creation of
the Imperial Chamber Court and Imperial Court Council) and internal
order through the perpetual peace and division into imperial districts.
Due to the failure of the common penny and the imperial regiment,
however, the reform remained incomplete. From 1519, Emperor Charles V,
who was also the Spanish king with an overseas colonial empire, pursued
the concept of a universal monarchy. His dominance in Europe established
the centuries-long Habsburg-French antagonism.
In 1517, Martin
Luther initiated the Reformation with demands for internal church and
theological reforms and an anti-papal attitude, which led to the
emergence of "Protestant" denominations. Catholicism reacted with the
Counter-Reformation, but the new evangelical churches held their ground
in large parts of the empire. The Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555
created a temporary balance: the sovereigns were allowed to determine
which denomination applied to their subjects (Cuius regio, eius
religio).
Confessional and political differences triggered the
Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) with many fatalities and devastated
landscapes, ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which strengthened and
established the influence of the territories towards the emperor (see
the most recent imperial farewell). The imperial princes were now
allowed to raise their own troops and could conclude treaties with
foreign powers. As a result, the empire became a de facto confederation
of states, but de jure it remained a monarchical and estate-based ruling
structure. From 1663, the Reichstag was transformed into a permanent
congress of envoys (Perpetual Reichstag), which met in Regensburg.
As part of his reunion policy, Louis XIV led the Palatinate War of
Succession. France acted as a model of absolutism, which did not allow
the central royal authority in the empire to become bureaucratically
organized states, but rather individual principalities. Some rulers,
especially Frederick II of Prussia, opened up to the philosophical
zeitgeist and carried out reforms (enlightened absolutism). The
political rise of Prussia in the 18th century led to dualism with the
House of Habsburg. After the French Revolution, their troops occupied
the left bank of the Rhine. After Napoleon Bonaparte's victory in the
Second Coalition War, the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss came to an end
in 1803. In 1806 the last Emperor, Franz II, laid down the crown and the
empire came to an end.
Under
Napoleon's influence, between 1801 and 1806, the number of states in the
area of the "Old Empire" was reduced from around 300 to around 60.
France annexed the German West and Northwest and created German vassal
states, whose thrones Napoleon occupied with family members (Grand Duchy
of Berg, Kingdom of Westphalia, Grand Duchy of Frankfurt). Napoleon
built up some German states as allies, above all the newly created
Kingdom of Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden in the Peace of Pressburg in
1805, by expanding them to include the areas of the secularized and
mediatized small states and uniting them in the Confederation of the
Rhine, which was allied with France. With the opponents Prussia and
Austria defeated by Napoleon, this followed the Holy Roman Empire, which
was divided into three parts and eliminated as a power factor. The
"French era" brought considerable modernization impulses to the Rhine
Confederation states, including civil liberties through the introduction
of the Code civil. In Prussia, too, far-reaching reforms were undertaken
from 1806 to make subjects citizens (cf. citoyen) and the state capable
of acting and fighting again.
From 1809 there was resistance to
French occupation and rule; various uprisings, such as those by Andreas
Hofer in Tyrol and Ferdinand von Schill in Prussia, were initially put
down. After Napoleon's defeat in the Russian campaign in 1812, Prussia
and Austria, in alliance with the Russian Empire, began the wars of
liberation (1813–1815), which strengthened German national feeling,
initially among Protestant academics, for example in the Lützower
Freikorps, which is also known as the origin of the colors black, red
and gold counts. Most of the states of the Confederation of the Rhine
joined the allies who, after winning the Battle of the Nations in
Leipzig in 1813, finally defeated Napoleon by 1815.
Subsequently,
the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) largely restored monarchical rule. In
the German Confederation, a confederation of states dominated by Austria
and Prussia, 38 states (→ Third Germany) were organized with the
Frankfurt Bundestag as the decision-making body. In 1833/1834 the German
Customs Union was created under Prussian supremacy. In the Vormärz
period, the old ruling elite suppressed the economically growing
bourgeoisie (persecution of demagogues), which continued to demand
political participation and the formation of a nation state, as in 1817
at the student Wartburg Festival and in 1832 at the Hambach Festival
with the hoisting of black, red and gold, the later national colors.
With the bourgeois March Revolution of 1848, many conservative
politicians had to resign, including the epoch-defining Austrian
Chancellor, Prince Metternich. Under the pressure of the revolution in
Berlin, the German Bundestag accepted the election of the Frankfurt
National Assembly. She set up a government and issued the Paulskirche
constitution, which included a German nation-state as the “Deutsches
Reich” with a constitutional monarchy.
But the Prussian King
Friedrich Wilhelm IV rejected the imperial crown that was offered to
him. After the May Uprising was crushed, the revolution ended on July
23, 1849 with the capture of Rastatt Fortress by Prussian troops. The
failure of the democratic movement led to the flight and emigration of
the Forty-Eighters and to a reactionary era in the German states.
In the early 1860s, Prussia's conflict with Austria over supremacy
in the German Confederation (German dualism) broke out, ending in
Prussia's victory in the German War in 1866. The German Confederation
was dissolved, and Prussia annexed a number of areas that were wartime
enemies in northern and central Germany. In 1866, under the dominance of
Prussia, the North German Confederation was initially founded as a
military alliance. Its constitution of 1867 made it a sovereign federal
state and initiated the small German solution - i.e. the formation of a
German state without Austria.
During
the Franco-Prussian War, the southern German states joined the North
German Confederation (January 1, 1871). This became the nation state for
all of Germany. On January 18, 1871, in Versailles, the Prussian King
Wilhelm I accepted the imperial title that he had received with the new
constitution. This was later celebrated as ReichsFoundation Day.
Otto von Bismarck, Prussian Prime Minister since 1862, had worked to
found the Reich and became the first Reich Chancellor. Bismarck's
imperial constitution supported the power of the constitutional
monarchy, but was also designed for modernization and was ambivalent;
School and civil marriage laws were partly liberal. Universal suffrage
(for men) applied to the Reichstag. Bismarck led the Kulturkampf against
the Catholic Church, against the Social Democrats he enacted the
anti-socialist laws from 1878 and attempted to bind the workers to the
state through social legislation. The high level of industrialization in
Germany ensured economic and population growth, rural exodus and a broad
increase in living standards; Germany rose to become the largest economy
in Europe.
Bismarck's alliance policy aimed at isolating France
with Germany as a semi-hegemonic power in the heart of Europe. After
German merchants and associations had pursued private colonial policies,
the Reich appropriated African territories in 1884. These German
colonies were referred to as "protected areas". In addition to
enthusiasm for colonialism, however, there was also skepticism and
rejection, at times even from Bismarck. The areas were exploited; in
some cases, the German colonial rulers committed crimes against the
locals (see, for example, the Herero and Nama genocide, 1904–1908).
In the "year of the three emperors" of 1888, Wilhelm II became
emperor. He demanded that the German Reich, which had risen economically
and militarily, be recognized by the previous great powers (“Place in
the Sun”) and endeavored to build up new colonies and naval forces under
imperialism. However, in a new alliance system (triple entente), Great
Britain now excluded Germany instead of France.
Tensions between
the major powers triggered the First World War in 1914, a costly war on
multiple fronts; more than two million German soldiers died, around
800,000 civilians starved to death. In other countries, too, the war led
to many deaths and political upheavals.
With the November Revolution and the proclamation of the
Republic on November 9, 1918, the German Empire ended, which, with its
capitulation, conceded defeat in the First World War. After the election
of the Constituent National Assembly - in which women were eligible to
vote and stand for election for the first time - the Weimar Constitution
came into force on August 14, 1919. In the Peace Treaty of Versailles,
significant areas were ceded, the Allied occupation of the Rhineland and
reparations were determined on the basis of Germany being solely
responsible for the war. This initial situation weighed on the political
climate; Right-wing extremists spread the stab-in-the-back legend
against the “November criminals”, which led to political murders and
attempted putsch (Kapp putsch 1920 and Hitler putsch 1923). Communist
uprisings such as the Ruhr Uprising in 1920, the March Battles in
Central Germany in 1921 and the Hamburg Uprising in 1923 also caused
instability. Inadequate reparation payments led Belgium and France to
occupy the Ruhr from 1923 to 1925.
In the brief "Golden Twenties"
culture flourished and from 1924 onwards so did the economy. With over
four million inhabitants, Berlin was the third largest and one of the
most dynamic cities in the world. Prosperity ended in 1929 with the
world economic crisis, at the peak of which in 1932 there were more than
six million unemployed in Germany, most of whom lived in misery. Radical
parties grew in popularity, making it increasingly difficult for
moderate parties to form stable governments. After the National
Socialists' landslide victory in the Reichstag elections in 1930, the
Chancellors, who changed in rapid succession, no longer had a
parliamentary majority; their presidential cabinets depended on Reich
President Paul von Hindenburg and his emergency decrees. The
deflationary policies of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning exacerbated the
economic crisis. His successor Franz von Papen (June-November 1932)
placed the democratic government of Prussia under a Reich Commissioner
(Preussenschlag) and had new elections held, in which the National
Socialists became even stronger.
Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher
tried to prevent Adolf Hitler from taking power with a “cross front” of
trade unions and sections of the National Socialists, but von Papen
persuaded the reluctant Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor on
January 30, 1933. On February 27, the Reichstag fire broke out, which is
still unsolved. Hitler used it to issue the “Reichstag Fire Decree”,
which suspended fundamental rights for an indefinite period. The
subsequent mass arrests of political opponents, especially communists
and social democrats, shaped the Reichstag elections of 1933, in which
the NSDAP narrowly missed an absolute majority and continued to govern
with the reactionary DNVP. The final assumption of power came five days
later, when the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act with the votes of the
bourgeois parties, only against the votes of the SPD, and thus also left
the legislation to Hitler's government.
Within a very short time, the NSDAP set up a totalitarian
one-party state in the German Reich under the leadership of Adolf Hitler
and brought the institutions into line. Unpopular people and political
opponents, especially communists, social democrats and trade unionists,
were removed from all authorities, the first concentration camps were
set up, books were burned and unpopular art was defamed as
“degenerate”. Nazi propaganda also penetrated private life; pressure was
already being exerted on children to join party organizations. In
October 1933, Hitler announced Germany's withdrawal from the League of
Nations. He secured his internal rule by also having internal party
opponents and former companions murdered, especially during the Röhm
murders on June 30, 1934, when the SA was deposed in favor of the SS,
who were unconditionally devoted to him. The generals of the Reichswehr
personally took the leadership oath on him. The Gestapo was used as a
political police force to combat political and ideological opponents.
From the beginning, Hitler had two goals: a war of aggression and
annihilation to create "living space in the East" and the persecution of
the Jews, which began with discrimination, humiliation and exclusion and
ended as the "final solution to the Jewish question" in the Holocaust.
The rearmament of the Wehrmacht began in 1934. An uninhibited expansive
monetary policy and debt management were aimed at early warfare. The
Reinhardt program reduced unemployment; this was welcomed by the
population as a fulfillment of economic promises. The German Jews were
getting worse and worse; the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 severely punished
relations between "Aryans" and Jews as "racial defilement". Jews lost
all public offices, were arbitrarily persecuted, robbed and blackmailed
and finally given a complete ban on their profession, and Jewish assets
were Aryanized. Jews were also sent to concentration camps with
increasing frequency. Many made the decision to emigrate, but most
stayed in Germany.
The racist Nazi ideology to create a "healthy"
"national community" (cf. master race) was directed against two other
groups, Roma and Slavs as "subhumans". They also harassed and murdered
homosexuals, the handicapped and "asocial" people, not as "foreign
races" but as threatening the "health" of the "national body". At the
same time, the regime celebrated propaganda successes; In 1936, the
Olympic Games improved the image abroad, and the demilitarized Rhineland
was occupied. The expansion began with the forced annexation of Austria
in March 1938, after which Germany was referred to as the Greater German
Reich. The Munich Agreement in October 1938 sealed the annexation of the
Sudetenland. By crushing the Czecho-Slovak Republic in March 1939,
Hitler broke his promise that the Sudetenland would be his last
territorial claim. This made it clear that the western powers' policy of
appeasement towards Germany had been a mistake.
After the German
Reich began invading Poland on September 1, 1939, Great Britain, Canada,
Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa and France declared war on
Germany. The Second World War claimed around 55 to 60 million lives in
six years. Germany initially achieved some military successes known as
"Blitzkrieg". Poland was divided up in the non-aggression pact between
Hitler and Stalin, the Wehrmacht then threw their armies west, attacked
Denmark and Norway in the “Weser Exercise” and the neutral states of
Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands in the “Western Campaign” and
occupied large parts within six weeks in 1940 of France. Hitler's
popularity was at its peak.
During the course of the war, the
Third Reich intensified the persecution of the Jews. Their departure was
forbidden and many died because of insufficient supplies and epidemics
while doing forced labor. From 1941 they had to wear the “Jewish star”
and their systematic murder began throughout the German sphere of
influence. The SS, who were primarily responsible for the execution, set
up extermination camps on former Polish or Soviet territory, where most
of the victims, brought in cattle cars, were immediately gassed (see
Operation Reinhardt). More than a million people were murdered in the
gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone.
The total number of Jews murdered was 6.3 million.
Operation
Barbarossa began on June 22, 1941 (Russian campaign 1941-1945). The
German army advanced on Moscow and was stopped in the Battle of Moscow
in December 1941. After the war ally Japan (→ Axis powers) attacked the
American navy in the attack on Pearl Harbor in the same month, Germany
also declared war on the United States. A lack of resources and the
superiority of the enemy soon brought about a turning point in the war,
which manifested itself in the lost Battle of Stalingrad with the
complete annihilation of the German 6th Army. As defeat became more
inevitable, politics became more inward. In his Sportpalast speech of
February 18, 1943, Joseph Goebbels proclaimed "total war" while the
German armies retreated on almost all fronts and numerous German cities
were destroyed by the bombing. When Soviet armies had already taken the
capital in the Battle of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in the
Führerbunker on April 30, 1945. The unconditional surrender of the
Wehrmacht followed on May 8th, the last Reich government was arrested in
the special area of Mürwik near Flensburg on May 23rd, 1945. Surviving
key political, military and economic leaders were indicted for their
individual responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity at
the Nuremberg trials.
Germany
was partitioned within the borders of December 31, 1937; On June 5,
1945, the four victorious powers – USA, USSR, Great Britain and finally
France – defined zones of occupation and then exercised sovereignty in
their respective zones west of the Oder-Neisse line and together via an
Allied command over Greater Berlin. The German eastern territories, a
quarter of the Reich's area, inhabited by a fifth of the Reich's
population, had already been placed under the administration of the
People's Republic of Poland before the end of the war after their
conquest by the Red Army, and in northern East Prussia that of the
Soviet Union (Kaliningrad Oblast). At Stalin's instigation, the western
powers approved this in the Potsdam Agreement, as well as the commenced
expulsion of the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. The Republic
of Austria was restored to its 1938 borders and also divided into four
zones of occupation. In 1946/1947 Saarland was separated from the
occupation area and placed under direct French administration.
Initially, the Four Powers tried to agree on a common occupation policy.
There was agreement on demilitarization, denazification and the breaking
up of the cartels; The differences between the Soviet Union and the
Western powers, which became more acute at the beginning of the Cold
War, were already apparent when it came to the question of what was to
be understood by democracy. In the three western zones, the Western
Allies placed the coal and steel industry, which was important for
reconstruction, under the Ruhr Statute. With the currency reform in June
1948 and the simultaneous abolition of price fixing and management, the
economic director of the western zones, Ludwig Erhard, set an economic
turning point that was primarily psychologically significant; with the
currency reform that followed a few days later in the Soviet-occupied
zone of Germany and the Berlin blockade by the USSR, the separation
between East and West deepened.
The Federal Republic of Germany was founded on May
23, 1949 in the three western zones of occupation and the Basic Law was
put into effect as a provisional constitution, the preamble of which
contained a requirement for reunification for a transitional period;
Bonn became the seat of government. Four and a half months later, the
German Democratic Republic was founded in the Soviet occupation zone.
Both sub-states saw each other as part of the continuity of an
all-German state and did not recognize the other. Both remained under
the control of the occupying powers. With integration into the opposing
military alliances of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, they received their
formal independence in 1955 (see Paris Treaties, USSR Declaration of
Sovereignty for the GDR). The prerequisite for this was that in July
1951 the three western powers formally ended the state of war with
Germany; the Soviet Union only declared this in January 1955, after
which other states in Eastern Europe followed. The Allies retained
responsibility for Germany as a whole and their rights in Berlin.
While a state-controlled planned economy was established in the GDR,
the Federal Republic opted for the so-called social market economy with
little state influence. With high demands for reparations (above all
dismantling), the Soviet occupying power made for difficult starting
conditions in the territory of the GDR, while in the Federal Republic an
"economic miracle" set in with foreign aid (Marshall Plan), which led to
consistently high growth rates, full employment and prosperity.
In the West, the new and rebuilding of cities was based on the Athens
Charter (CIAM) of 1933, while in the East the 16 principles of urban
development, which were based on the Soviet model, became binding. As a
result, the reconstruction in both German states followed the model of
the car-friendly city. Residential and commercial were thus often
separated from one another. From then on, numerous suburban satellite
towns (“dormitory towns”) were also planned. This type of urban
development was recognized early on as misguided.
The Iron
Curtain through Central Europe also divided Germany; the continued
emigration of young and highly qualified people in particular caused the
GDR to increasingly seal off the inner-German border until it was
completely closed in 1961 under the long-standing SED General Secretary
Walter Ulbricht when the Berlin Wall was built, which made even family
contacts between West and East Germany very difficult. Anyone who tried
to flee the republic was stopped by force (see orders to shoot, border
and wall deaths).
In terms of foreign policy, the longstanding
Federal Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, pushed through Western integration
and participation in the economic merger of Western Europe, which began
with the Montanunion in 1952, for the partially sovereign Federal
Republic. The Élysée Treaty of 1963 established Franco-German friendship
as the engine of European integration. In September 1950, the GDR became
a full member of the Eastern Council for Mutual Economic Aid (COME).
Within the GDR, socialism was made binding by the state party SED
and mass organizations such as the FDJ; free elections no longer
existed, and the uprising of June 17, 1953 was crushed. Dissenting
opinions were pursued through censorship and the extensive surveillance
of the secret police, State Security; against this, protest was formed
in a dissident and civil rights movement, which became radicalized when
Wolf Biermann was expatriated in 1976. In the Federal Republic, which
was liberalizing as a result of Westernization, demands for social
change and for coming to terms with the past increased, since the Nazi
elites had remained largely unmolested - especially by the West German
student movement of the 1960s. An extra-parliamentary opposition arose
against the grand coalition formed in 1966 with its emergency laws. The
social-liberal coalition under Willy Brandt expanded the welfare state
and social freedoms from 1969; the "New Ostpolitik" aimed at detente
with Eastern Europe earned Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 and
criticism from conservative quarters.
In 1973 the Federal
Republic and the GDR became member states of the UN. In addition to
increasing supply problems (scarcity economy), the planned economy of
the GDR had to contend with the demographic development, which Erich
Honecker, who ruled from 1971 to 1989, countered with massive family
support. The women's and family policy of the GDR is considered to be
partially successful, as is the social equality and security achieved.
The 1970s in the Federal Republic were characterized by increasing debt
and unemployment after the oil crisis and the terror of the left-wing
Red Army faction. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) lost support in his
party because of his support for the NATO double-track decision –
attacked by the peace movement, part of the emerging New Social
Movements – and was replaced in 1982 by Helmut Kohl (CDU), who in 1989
saw the chance for German reunification seized.
The
dissatisfaction of the GDR population had grown in the constant system
comparison supported by West television. At the end of the 1980s,
Mikhail Gorbachev's reform policy in the Soviet Union also gave rise to
a protest movement in the GDR, which put pressure on the political
leadership in the ailing GDR in the autumn of 1989 with a movement to
leave the country about the hole in the Iron Process and with mass
demonstrations ("We are the people") and led to Honecker's resignation.
On November 9, 1989, the GDR leadership's granting of freedom of travel
led to a mass rush and the opening of the border crossing points of the
Berlin Wall. Beginning with his ten-point program at the end of
November, Kohl steered development towards national unity (“We are one
people”) while maintaining military and political ties with the West. In
the first free elections to the People's Chamber on March 18, 1990, the
party alliance "Alliance for Germany" led by the East CDU, which was
based on rapid reunification, won. This was negotiated over the next few
months in the Unification Treaty and with the representatives of the
Allies as part of the "Two Plus Four Talks".
German reunification took place on October 3, 1990 with
the accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany; this Day of
German Unity became a national holiday. The Two Plus Four Treaty, which
came into force in 1991, finally settled the German question: the four
powers gave up their sovereign powers, their troops left the country by
the end of 1994, and the reunified Germany received its full state
sovereignty. It committed to disarmament to a maximum of 370,000
soldiers. With the German-Polish border treaty signed in Warsaw on
November 14, 1990, Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse border; the
territory east of it thus became finally Polish under international law.
This was complemented by a policy of reconciliation with its eastern
neighbors, first with Poland in 1991 and then with the Czech Republic in
1997. In terms of foreign policy, the government under Chancellor Kohl
advocated deeper integration with the formation of the European Union,
the subsequent eastward enlargement of the EU and the introduction of
the euro.
The Bundestag made Berlin the capital in 1991, to which
the government and parliament moved in 1999 (see Reichstag building and
government district). After a brief reunification boom, the 1990s were
characterized by economic stagnation, mass unemployment and a "reform
backlog". The new federal states in particular did not develop as
quickly as hoped after the introduction of the market economy
("blossoming landscapes"). From 1991 to 1993 there was a wave of riots
against asylum seekers. The new federal states only stabilized socially
and economically in the 2000s.
In the 1998 federal election,
Kohl's black-yellow coalition lost its majority in the Bundestag. The
previous opposition parties SPD and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen formed the
first red-green coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which
pushed through far-reaching changes in social, pension and health
policies. Ecology became more important, for example with the beginning
of the nuclear phase-out. The socio-political liberalizations included
the civil partnership law and a new citizenship law. The first combat
deployment of German soldiers since the Second World War – in 1999 in
the Kosovo War – marked a turning point in foreign policy. After the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Schröder assured the USA of
"unrestricted solidarity"; Germany took part in the war in Afghanistan
but not in the Iraq war, which popularized the "Chancellor of Peace"
Schroeder.
Schröder's second term of office, starting in 2002,
was shaped by Agenda 2010 and the associated labor market reforms of the
Hartz concept. Social benefits for the unemployed were reduced and
linked to individual support measures, which those affected felt was
unfair. This led to protests across Germany and indirectly to early
federal elections in 2005, after which Angela Merkel (CDU) became
Chancellor. Their grand coalition faced bank failures during the global
financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. After overcoming
this, Germany experienced a sustained economic boom and a sustained
decline in unemployment. The euro crisis (from 2010) and the refugee
crisis in Europe from 2015 have been the most important political
challenges ever since, and the economic boom has made it much easier to
overcome them. However, both events also led to considerable social
discord and to a strengthening of EU-sceptical and Islamophobic
movements (Pegida, Alternative for Germany). With the legalization of
same-sex marriages, the introduction of a third sex in the registry
office and the cessation of conscription for military service in the
Bundeswehr, Germany strived for further liberalization of its society.
Angela Merkel ended the last of her four terms in office during the
COVID-19 pandemic, to which Germany reacted with temporary restrictions
on economic, cultural and public life and fighting it with national
vaccination programs, including the novel mRNA vaccine Tozinameran
developed in Germany , started. The vast majority of Germans supported
the measures to combat the pandemic. However, on the one hand, social
and economic upheavals within German society, the German healthcare
system, and Germany's technological deficits compared to other western
countries became apparent as a result of the pandemic. On the other
hand, protest movements mobilized against the measures to combat the
pandemic, specifically addressing public fears about vaccinations. After
the 2021 federal elections, Merkel was replaced by Olaf Scholz (SPD) and
the CDU, which had previously governed in coalitions, by a
red-green-yellow coalition. With it, the digital transformation of
Germany as well as the transport and energy transition to sustainable
energy sources that began due to climate change are continuing.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to extensive western
economic sanctions against Russia, in which Germany also participated.
Among other things, Germany stopped the commissioning of the Nord Stream
2 gas pipeline. The German economy, which had made itself dependent on
Russian gas, had to accept a sharp rise in prices in the energy sector.
Within the first six months, Germany supported Ukraine with weapons
worth several million euros and with the training of Ukrainian soldiers.
According to the prevailing doctrine and consistent case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, the Federal Republic of Germany as a state and a subject of international law is identical to the German Reich and its predecessor, the North German Confederation, and has therefore had state continuity since 1867 (see the legal situation in Germany after 1945). The historically different constitutions provide information about the self-image of the respective state. After Germany was occupied by the Four Powers, the victorious powers of World War II, in 1945, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic that had been created in West Germany was promulgated on May 23, 1949 and came into force the following day. It was limited in its scope by the division of Germany and, until 1955, by the occupation statute. In the eastern part of Germany, the GDR was founded as a separate state on October 7, 1949 and received a constitution that was replaced in 1968 and revised in 1974. The Basic Law lost its provisional character after reunification, with the GDR joining its area of application on October 3, 1990. With the end of four-power responsibility, the united Germany achieved full sovereignty.
The national territory of the Federal Republic (federal
territory) results from the totality of the national territories of its
federal states. The sovereign territory was extended twice by accession
under Article 23 Clause 2 of the old version of the Basic Law: in 1957
to include Saarland, in 1990 to include the accession area of the GDR
and Berlin (eastern part of Berlin and western Staaken).
The
exclusive economic zone in the North and Baltic Seas does not belong to
the national territory. The course of the national border is now fixed
except for parts of Lake Constance.
The only existing condominium
in Germany is the joint German-Luxembourgish territory formed by the
rivers Moselle, Sauer and Our on the border between the Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg and the Federal Republic of Germany (with the states of
Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland). It goes back to the Vienna Congress
Act of June 9, 1815, the regulations of which were confirmed in a border
treaty in 1984. The area is the only municipality-free area in the
states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.
The German-Dutch
border issue in the area of the Ems Dollart area (→ Ems Dollart Region)
is still controversial because both neighboring states maintain their
incompatible legal positions on the course of the border. Within
Germany, the course of the state borders between Schleswig-Holstein,
Lower Saxony and possibly Hamburg in the area of the Lower Elbe has not
been finally clarified. For this area, the federal states have regulated
administrative and judicial responsibilities through administrative
agreements and state treaties, but territorial sovereignty is not
clarified with this. Exclave parts of the national territory are the
Baden-Württemberg Büsingen on the High Rhine, which is surrounded by
Switzerland and belongs to the Swiss customs area, as well as some small
North Rhine-Westphalian areas, which are separated from the main area of
Germany by the few meters wide Belgian Vennbahn route.
The Basic Law (GG) is the constitution of the Federal
Republic of Germany. The head of state is the Federal President with
primarily representative tasks. He is elected by the Federal Assembly.
He is followed by the President of the German Bundestag, the Federal
Chancellor, the incumbent President of the Bundesrat, who represents the
Federal President, and the President of the Federal Constitutional
Court. The seat of the constitutional body of the Federal Government is
the federal capital Berlin (Section 3 (3) of the Berlin-Bonn Act).
Article 20 of the Basic Law stipulates – secured by the eternity
clause – that Germany must be organized as a democratic, social state
based on the rule of law and on a federal basis. System of government is
a parliamentary democracy. Federalism is divided into two levels in the
political system: the federal level, which represents the entire state
of Germany externally, and the state level, which exists in each of the
16 federal states. Each level has its own state organs of executive
(executive power), legislative (legislative power) and judiciary
(judiciary power). The states, in turn, determine the order of their
cities and communities; for example, five countries are divided into a
total of 22 administrative districts. The countries have given their own
constitutions; In principle, they have state status, but they are
limited subjects of international law who may only enter into their own
treaties with other states with the consent of the Federal Government
(Art. 32 (3), Art. 24 (1) GG). The Federal Republic can be seen as the
constitutional union of its federal states and only then does it acquire
state character, i.e. it is a federal state in the true sense of the
word.
The federal legislative bodies are the German
Bundestag, the Bundesrat and, in the case of a state of defense, the
Joint Committee, subject to additional requirements. Federal laws are
passed by the Bundestag with a simple majority. They become effective if
the Bundesrat has not lodged an objection or given its consent (Article
77 of the Basic Law). An amendment to the Basic Law is only possible
with a two-thirds majority of the members of the Bundestag and the
Bundesrat (Art. 79 Para. 2 GG). In the federal states, the state
parliaments decide on the laws of their state. Although the deputies are
not bound by instructions under the Basic Law (Article 38 of the Basic
Law), in legislative practice preliminary decisions in the parties that
participate in the formation of political will dominate (Article 21 of
the Basic Law).
The competence to legislate lies with the federal
states, unless the federal government has legislative powers (Art. 70 to
72 GG) – namely exclusive or, in certain cases, competing legislation.
The executive is formed at the federal level by the
federal government, which consists of the federal chancellor as head of
government and the federal ministers. All federal ministries have one
office in Berlin and one in the federal city of Bonn; some have their
first office in Bonn. At state level, the prime ministers, in the city
states of Hamburg and Bremen the presidents of the senate, and in Berlin
the governing mayor heads the executive. The federal states are also
parliamentary democracies and their heads of government are elected by
the state parliaments, citizenships and the Berlin House of
Representatives. The federal and state administrations are each headed
by the relevant ministers.
The Federal Chancellor is elected by
the Bundestag with a majority of its members on the proposal of the
Federal President (Art. 63 GG), his term of office ends with the
electoral period of the Bundestag (Art. 69 (2) GG). Before this expires,
the Federal Chancellor can only resign from office against his will if
the Bundestag elects a successor with a majority of its members (Art. 67
GG, so-called constructive vote of no confidence). The federal ministers
are appointed on the proposal of the Federal Chancellor (Article 64(1)
of the Basic Law). They and the Federal Chancellor form the Federal
Government (Article 62 of the Basic Law), whose policymaking authority
lies with the Federal Chancellor (Article 65, first sentence of the
Basic Law). The leadership role in the German “chancellor democracy”
falls to the federal chancellor. The Chancellor also nominates the
German candidate for the post of EU Commissioner.
The exercise of
state powers and the implementation of federal laws are in principle the
responsibility of the federal states, unless the Basic Law stipulates or
permits deviating regulations (Art. 30, Art. 83 GG).
In 2021, the state budget showed income from taxes,
parafiscal charges and fees of 1,629 billion euros and expenditure of
1,762 billion euros. Of the revenue, 833 billion euros were tax revenue
from the federal, state, local and EU governments. Due to the increased
number of employed persons subject to social security contributions to
around 33 million and rising wages, important tax revenues such as
income tax and sales tax are still at a high percentage for the state.
According to the Deutsche Bundesbank report, Germany’s national debt
in 2021 was around 2,500 billion euros. With a gross domestic product of
around 3,600 billion euros for 2021, the national debt ratio
corresponded to around 70 percent of the gross domestic product. In
2005, the national debt of the Federal Republic of Germany amounted to
1541 billion euros.
The Federal Republic, whose government bonds
are called Bunds, receives the best possible credit rating from the
three major rating agencies Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. Demand
for securities, which are considered safe investments, has significantly
reduced interest rates in recent years and in some cases even led to
negative interest rates, which is one of the main reasons for Germany's
budget surplus.
In addition to various transaction taxes (e.g.
sales tax), the state generates a large part of its revenue from taxes
on income and earnings: These include income tax, corporation tax and
trade tax. Insofar as products or services are subject to sales tax, the
tax rate in Germany is 19 (general rate) or 7 percent (reduced rate,
e.g. groceries). Colloquially and in EU law, sales tax is also called
value added tax. According to an OECD study from 2014, Germans have the
highest tax burden in the world, even ahead of the Scandinavian welfare
states, due to the high taxes and other charges such as social security
contributions. According to a study published by the UN, Germany is one
of the countries most willing to finance public goods through taxes. In
some cases, the federal government can borrow long-term loans (up to ten
years) at negative interest rates.
According to Article 21 of the Basic Law, parties
participate in the formation of the political will of the people. The
spectrum of parties is shaped by the parties represented in the
Bundestag. The mainstream parties, the SPD and the Union parties (in
factions CDU and CSU) have always belonged to it. After the federal
elections in 2021, the other parties will also be represented there: Die
Linke and Grüne, the SSW as well as the AfD and the FDP; the SSW is
represented in the Bundestag for the first time since the Bundestag
elections in 1949.
All the parties mentioned are represented in
the political groups in the European Parliament. Almost all influential
parties are supported by youth organizations, other political
organizations include school representatives, student associations,
women's and senior citizens' organizations, business associations,
municipal organizations and international associations. Party-affiliated
foundations help determine the political discourse – legally independent
of the parties.
Germany is a founding member
of the Council of Europe and the European Communities, which grew
together to become the political European Union (EU) in the 1990s
through initially predominantly economic integration. The Federal
Republic of Germany joined the European Monetary Union in 1990 and is
part of the European single market. The euro has been introduced as a
means of payment since 2002 and has replaced the German mark in Germany.
Germany is also part of the Schengen area and judicial and police
cooperation through Europol and Eurojust. The common foreign and
security policy of the EU determines German foreign policy. Article 23
of the Basic Law sets the legal framework for German European policy in
the EU.
The European Patent Office (Munich) and several EU
institutions have their headquarters in Germany: the European Central
Bank in Frankfurt am Main, the EU insurance supervisory authority also
in Frankfurt and the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne.
The guidelines of German foreign policy are the
Western ties and European integration. In terms of security policy,
membership in the transatlantic defense alliance NATO has been central
since 1955.
During the Cold War, West German foreign policy was
limited. One of the most important goals was reunification. Military
operations abroad were out of the question. According to the Basic Law,
the Bundeswehr is not allowed to take part in aggressive wars, its only
task is to defend the country and the alliance. The "New Ostpolitik"
initiated by the social-liberal coalition from 1969 under the motto
change through rapprochement, which important allies were initially
skeptical about, was able to set its own course and was continued by
Helmut Kohl's liberal-conservative government from 1982. Since
reunification, Germany has had greater international responsibility;
Since 1991, the Bundeswehr has been taking part in peacekeeping and
peace-enforcing missions outside Germany and the territory of NATO
allies (out-of-area missions) under the supervision of the Bundestag and
together with allied armies. The federal government of Gerhard Schröder
rejected the Iraq war in 2003 and thus opposed the important ally USA.
Germany traditionally plays a leading role in the European Union
together with France. Germany is pushing ahead with efforts to create a
uniform, effective European foreign and security policy that goes beyond
economic and monetary union. Further foreign policy goals are the
implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on climate protection and the
worldwide recognition of the International Criminal Court. Germany has a
particular interest in a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict,
which it supports primarily through informal contact opportunities
between the parties involved. Together with its allies Great Britain and
France, Germany is trying to persuade Iran to stop continuing its
nuclear energy program.
On July 13, 2016, the Federal Government
adopted the new White Paper on Security Policy and the Future of the
Bundeswehr as Germany's top basic security policy document.
After its founding in 1949, the Federal Republic of
Germany was initially not allowed to set up its own armed forces due to
the occupation statute. However, under the impact of the Korean War and
the Sovietization of Eastern Europe, the Federal Republic was allowed,
as part of rearmament, to set up the paramilitary Federal Border Guard
as border police, first in 1951 and then full-fledged armed forces from
1955, in order to join NATO. The establishment of this Bundeswehr as a
prerequisite for accession was therefore an important contribution to
the West and thus to the international recognition of the Federal
Republic, but domestically it was highly controversial under the impact
of the Second World War. After reunification in 1990, parts of the GDR's
National People's Army (NVA) were incorporated into these armed forces.
From 1956 to 2011, according to Art. 12a of the Basic Law, all men over
the age of 18 were subject to compulsory military service in Germany. It
was suspended in 2011 and replaced by voluntary military service. Since
2001, women have also had unrestricted access to service in the armed
forces. Their share is 12.4 percent of the soldiers (as of 2020). Around
3,100 German soldiers were deployed abroad in mid-2019.
The
Bundeswehr is divided into the army, air force and navy as well as the
supporting organizational areas of the armed forces base, central
medical service and cyber and information space. After the end of the
Cold War, the total strength of the Bundeswehr was gradually reduced
from around 500,000 to less than 180,000 soldiers by 2015, after a
maximum peacetime strength of 370,000 German soldiers had been defined
as binding under international law in the Two Plus Four Treaty. The
suspension of conscription in 2011 was also associated with a
comprehensive reform of the Bundeswehr, which primarily meant setting a
maximum personnel strength of 185,000 soldiers and 55,000 civilian
employees. In addition, the numbers of heavy equipment (battle tanks,
artillery) were significantly reduced. The background to these
structural changes was the Bundeswehr's focus on participating in
international UN and NATO missions since the mid-1990s, for which fewer
military personnel and, above all, lighter and more quickly deployable
material were required. With the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014
and the war in the entire Ukraine since 2022, the Bundeswehr's focus of
tasks changed back to national and alliance defense within the framework
of NATO and the EU.
The Bundeswehr is the first army of a German
nation-state to be a parliamentary army, the deployment of which is
decided exclusively by the Bundestag on the recommendation of the
Federal Government. In times of peace, the Commander-in-Chief (“holder
of the authority to command and command”) is the Federal Minister of
Defence; in the case of defense, this function is transferred to the
Federal Chancellor. The Bundeswehr's understanding of tradition
distances itself both from the Wehrmacht of the Nazi era and from the
NVA. It refers to the Prussian army reform around 1810, the wars of
liberation against Napoleon, the military resistance against National
Socialism and their own history (see tradition decree). The model of the
“citizen in uniform” applies to the soldiers. The Great Tattoo is
considered the most important military ceremonial; the swearing-in oaths
and oaths often taken by the soldiers outside of military installations
have a high public impact.
In 2020, the Federal Republic of
Germany spent 45.2 billion euros on the Bundeswehr. Germany is thus one
of the ten countries in the world with the highest defense budgets;
German spending, at around 1.3 percent of gross domestic product, is
below the average for NATO member states (1.6 percent).
In 2019, the fire department in Germany had around 1,348,000 active members, including over 1,003,000 volunteer firefighters, around 35,000 professional firefighters, 35,000 plant firefighters and around 275,000 young people and children. They are active in over 22,100 voluntary fire brigades, 110 professional fire brigades, 760 factory fire brigades and 22,900 youth fire brigades. The German fire brigades were alerted to more than 4,519,000 calls in the same year. Almost 225,000 fires had to be extinguished, technical assistance had to be provided almost 650,000 times, around 2,664,000 emergency rescue services and 981,000 other operations had to be performed. In addition, several million supporting members belong to the local fire brigade associations. The fire brigades are combined via district fire brigade associations, possibly district fire brigade associations and state fire brigade associations to form the German Fire Brigade Association, which represents them in the world fire brigade association CTIF.
Due to federalism in Germany, the federal states are
responsible for the internal security of the Federal Republic, and thus
in particular the state police and state criminal investigation offices.
Within the police, a further distinction is often made between
protective police, riot police, criminal police, special units (such as
the special task force (SEK) or the mobile task force (MEK)) and the
regulatory authorities. In order to maintain public order, these are
also supported in some municipalities by public order offices.
Nevertheless, there are also several organizations for the protection of
public safety at the federal level. This includes in particular the
Federal Police (formerly the Federal Border Guard), which takes on tasks
such as border protection, the railway police and counter-terrorism and
also maintains the special unit GSG 9, as well as the Federal Criminal
Police Office, which, among other things, pursues particularly serious
crimes. Both are directly subordinate to the Federal Ministry of the
Interior and Homeland. In addition, there are the enforcement
authorities of the Federal Customs Administration (e.g. the Customs
Investigation Service, the Customs Criminal Police Office and the
Central Customs Support Group), which are responsible for enforcing
fiscal, commercial and labor law regulations and report to the Federal
Ministry of Finance.
There are also three federal intelligence
services in Germany: The civil Federal Intelligence Service (BND) as a
foreign intelligence service collects and evaluates civilian and
military information about other countries. As domestic intelligence
services, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
(BfV), the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) for the portfolio
of the Federal Ministry of Defense (BMVg) and one state authority for
the protection of the Constitution in each of the federal states are
responsible for tasks relating to the protection of the Constitution and
counter-espionage. The intelligence services in Germany do not have
police enforcement powers due to the separation requirement.
Germany is one of the safest countries in the world.
As in all affluent countries in the western world, there was a rise in
crime from the early 1960s to the early 1990s and a decline since then,
particularly in violent crime and theft.
The rate of homicides
per year is used as an index for comparisons of the propensity to
violence over long periods of time and over large geographical
distances. Germany had 0.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, which
corresponds to the average in Western Europe. The average for all of
Europe was 2.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the global average was
5.8. East Asian countries average 0.5, Singapore only 0.2 cases per
100,000 population.
Detailed, comprehensive data has been
recorded in the police crime statistics since 1953 (until 1990 only for
the old federal states). Overall crime peaked in 1993. By 2021, the rate
had fallen 27 percent. The rate of theft fell by 65 percent from 1993 to
2021. However, the peak in reported violent crimes was not reached in
the 1990s, but in 2007. The decline here was 25 percent by 2021. It is
assumed that there will be an increasing willingness to report crimes
and a decreasing number of unreported cases, especially in the case of
violence against women.
Origin
German law belongs to the continental legal
family and has developed for most of its existence without the order of
a German nation state. It is therefore based on the historically
transmitted German law, which goes back to Germanic tribal laws and
medieval legal collections such as the Sachsenspiegel, and the reception
of Roman law from the 12th century, which was considered superior due to
its exactness and universality. With the exception of a few legal
enactments such as the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532, the Holy
Roman Empire was characterized by particular rights. Legal
standardization only began in the course of the 19th century and a
General German Commercial Code was introduced in the German
Confederation in 1861 and the Imperial Court in 1877 and the Imperial
Justice Laws in 1879, among other things, in the German Empire. In 1900
the Civil Code came into force.
National Socialism perverted the law as a means of
tyranny, for which the terror judgments of the People's Court, the
Nuremberg Laws and numerous other legal acts stand, which were only
repealed by Allied occupation law, a non-German source of law. Even
though the occupation law was repealed in five federal laws and most of
its provisions found their way into German law, the German
administration of justice is still trying to restore the law that was
torn apart by the National Socialist unlawful state. For example, the
criminal law definition of murder, which dates back to the National
Socialist era, is disputed among German magistrates. The version of §
175, which was tightened in the Third Reich, also led to extensive
persecution of homosexuality in the Federal Republic; it was only
reformed in 1969 and removed from the penal code in 1994.
In the
GDR, the law was governed by the one-party rule of the SED; the
separation of powers and independence of the courts prescribed by the
constitution were circumvented in constitutional reality. In the
administration of justice and legislation, the GDR made efforts over the
period of its existence to distance itself from the bourgeois legal
tradition, which was founded in the Kaiserreich and continued in the
Federal Republic, and to create legal historically independent sources
of law. Unlike the Federal Republic, the GDR legally rejected both
identity with and legal succession to the German Reich. In the Civil
Code of the GDR, which came into force in 1976, the "supply
relationships" of the citizens were in the foreground. Questions of
property were regulated under the clear sign of the socialist planned
economy, there was no longer a definition of property with the
introduction of the Civil Code.
The accession of the GDR ended
both the development and the continued existence of GDR law. Except for
old cases in the administration of justice, it no longer has any
influence on present-day German law.
The death penalty was
abolished in Germany with Article 102 of the Basic Law when it was
promulgated. In the GDR, it was only abolished in 1987, a few years
before it ended.
Present
The Federal Republic of Germany sees
itself as a constitutional state (Art. 20, Art. 28 Para. 1 Sentence 1
GG), which means that state activity can only be justified by law and is
limited by law. The content of German laws is therefore usually first
the limit of their sphere of action before law is established. For
example, in Section 1 of the Criminal Code, all acts that were not
punishable by law at the time of the act are released from punishment.
Anyone whose rights are violated by public authority has the right to
seek legal protection against this in court (Article 19(4) of the Basic
Law). The judges are not subject to any instructions when administering
justice and are independent of other powers of a state or political
nature. Germany has jury courts in which judgments are made jointly by
honorary judges and professional judges if the expectation of punishment
is not too high. Jury trials were abolished in Germany in 1924.
Extensive codes of procedure such as the Code of Criminal Procedure and
the Code of Civil Procedure determine the precise course of court
proceedings, but also the pre-, extra- and post-court proceedings.
Jurisdiction is essentially exercised by the courts of the federal
states: in civil and criminal matters by the district courts, the
regional courts and the higher regional courts (ordinary jurisdiction);
In terms of specialized jurisdiction, there are labour, administrative,
social and financial jurisdictions. The Federal Patent Court is
responsible for commercial legal protection. The supreme federal courts
(Art. 95 GG) serve as courts of appeal: the Federal Court of Justice as
the supreme civil and criminal court, the Federal Labor Court, the
Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Social Court and the Federal
Fiscal Court. The constitutional courts of the federal states and the
Federal Constitutional Court (Art. 93 GG) rule on constitutional
disputes, whose decisions can have the force of law and thus bind other
courts (cf. Section 31 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act).
European law and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union are becoming increasingly important. As a result of Germany's long-term contracts with the European Union and the legal activities based on them, German law is significantly influenced by Union law. In December 2021, the European Court of Justice declared in a judgment that was groundbreaking for the whole of the Union that the law it has pronounced could also override the case law of the constitutional courts of the member states. Thus, according to observers, the European Court of Justice also claims to be the final instance of the jurisdiction of the member states; these could no longer invoke their constitution in contrast to EU law. The judgment was preceded by various conflicts between the European Union and its member states over the last instance, constitutional jurisprudence - including (discontinued) infringement proceedings against Germany due to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court on financial supervision that contradicted the ECJ.
With a nominal gross domestic product of around 3.8
trillion US dollars in 2020, Germany is the largest economy in Europe
and the fourth largest in the world. In terms of nominal GDP per capita,
Germany ranks 18th internationally and 8th in the European Union (as of
2019). Measured by the value of goods, the country was the third largest
importer and exporter in the world in 2016. The United Nations
Development Program ranks Germany among the countries with a very high
level of human development. It was ranked 3rd in the Global
Competitiveness Index in 2018. Germany's competitiveness is fed
primarily from the high number of small and medium-sized enterprises
(Mittelstand), which are among the world market leaders in specialized
areas of industry.
Of the total economic output, 2.1 percent is
generated in the primary economic sector (agriculture), 24.4 percent in
the secondary sector (industry) and 73.5 percent in the tertiary sector
(services). In 2014, Germany recorded a record high with an average of
around 42.6 million employees subject to social security contributions.
The average number of unemployed in 2014 was 2.898 million. According to
Eurostat, Germany had the second lowest unemployment rate in the
European Union at 3.1 percent in June 2019. Entrepreneurship and
start-ups are an important factor in creating new jobs, about which
information is provided, among other things, by the annual KfW start-up
monitor.
Germany has a wide variety of raw material deposits and
has a long mining tradition (including coal, precious salts, industrial
minerals and building materials as well as silver, iron and tin). The
industry is dependent on global raw material imports.
The human
potential with good education and the culture of innovation are
considered prerequisites for the success of the German economy and
knowledge society. The automotive, commercial vehicle, electrical
engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical industries are
considered to be the most competitive sectors of German industry
worldwide. Aerospace technology, the financial sector with the Frankfurt
am Main financial center and the insurance industry, especially
reinsurance, are also of global importance. The importance of the
cultural and creative industries is increasing.
As a member of
the European Union, Germany is part of the largest single market in the
world with a combined population of around 500 million and a nominal GDP
of USD 17.6 trillion in 2011. Germany is also part of the Eurozone, a
currency union with 19 member countries and around 337 million
inhabitants. Their currency is the euro, whose monetary policy is
controlled by the European Central Bank (ECB) and is the second most
important reserve currency in the world and the world's largest currency
in circulation in terms of cash value.
The unemployment rate in
Germany is among the lowest in the EU; it is 3%, only in Poland and the
Czech Republic is it lower. The average of all EU countries is 6.1%,
while the OECD countries have an unemployment rate of 4.8% (as of March
2023).
Income inequality in Germany in 2005 was just below the
OECD average. In 2008, a median disposable income was 1,252 with a Gini
index of 0.29. With a Gini index of 0.78, the distribution of wealth in
Germany is much more concentrated than the distribution of income.
According to Credit Suisse, total private wealth in 2016 was $12.4
trillion. On average, every adult in Germany had assets of 185,175 US
dollars in 2016 (median assets: 42,833 US dollars). This is 27th place
worldwide and less than in most of Germany's neighboring countries - a
cause or consequence (depending on the interpretation) is a low
proportion of property ownership. In 2016 there were 1,637,000
millionaires in Germany and in 2017 a total of 114 billionaires (in US
dollars), the third highest number in the world.
From 1986 to 1988, 1990 and 2003 to 2008, the German
economy recorded a higher export surplus than any other country ("world
export champion"). In the 2010s, Germany was consistently the country
with the third highest value of exports worldwide. In 2020, exports
reached a total value of 1,205 billion euros, the value of imports was
1,025 billion euros - a surplus of the foreign trade balance of 180
billion euros. The current account surplus was the highest in the world
in 2016 and was more than 7 percent of economic output, which has drawn
some criticism from home and abroad.
The most important trading
partners (imports and exports) in 2020 were the People's Republic of
China (213 billion euros trade volume), the Netherlands (173 billion
euros), the United States (172 billion euros), France (147 billion
euros), Poland (123 billion euros) and Italy (114 billion euros). The
largest export markets were the USA, the PRC, France and the
Netherlands. Germany conducts more than half of its foreign trade with
the countries of the European Union. The value of all exports of goods
and services accounted for 47 percent of economic output in 2019, which
is high among larger economies. The country is therefore potentially
vulnerable to fluctuations in global trade, even if the upswing of
recent years has been primarily consumer-driven.
Germany was hit
by the international financial crisis at the end of 2008 and 2009, which
led to a 5.6 percent decline in gross domestic product in 2009. The
German economy then grew significantly again by 4.1 and 3.7 percent
(2010 and 2011) and more moderately in 2012 and 2013 with 0.5 percent
each. Economic growth accelerated again in 2014 to 1.9 percent and
further in 2015 and 2016 to 1.7 and 1.9 percent respectively. For 2017,
growth was 2.2 percent. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a 4.6 percent slump
in economic output in 2020. The following year, the economy recovered
somewhat, registering growth of 2.7 percent.
Between 2000 and
2011, the annual average inflation rate was a minimum of 0.3 percent
(2009) and a maximum of 2.6 percent (2008). At the beginning of 2015,
Germany experienced slight deflation (−0.3%) for the first time since
2009 due to the low oil price. After years of relatively moderate price
increases, the inflation rate in Germany reached its highest level since
the 1950s in the context of the global energy crisis in 2022, with
double-digit price increases.
Germany is known worldwide for the development and production of innovative and high -quality cars. The automobile was invented by Carl Benz in Germany in 1886, which laid the foundation for the development of the world's third largest automotive industry. Today, corporations such as Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW are an important part of the German economy. In 2017, the German Auto Industry generated more than 400 billion euros in sales with over 800,000 employees in Germany, and about seven percent of GDP is due to it.
Information and communication technology (ICT) is an
essential location factor. The digitization of the German economy is
promoted under the project name Industry 4.0. Deutsche Telekom is the
highest sales in Germany. SAP, Software AG and DATEV are among the most
important software manufacturers in the world with headquarters in
Germany. In the hardware area, the development is particularly
important, for example at Infineon and FTS. In addition to the
traditional companies in the ICT industry, innovative startups and
e-ventures in Germany are becoming increasingly important.
In
2017, 88 percent of the population had internet access; About 87 percent
were able to fall back on a broadband connection.
Germany was the fourth largest producer of primary
energy in Europe in 2010 and was listed in 24th place among the energy
producers in the world. In 2012, primary energy consumption in Germany
was 13,757 PJ (2005: 14,238 PJ). The country is measured by the second
largest national energy consumer in Europe and seventh largest in the
world. The power supply was guaranteed in 2012 by 1059 companies with
headquarters in Germany.
In 2016, renewable energies delivered
29.2 percent of gross electricity production, 13.4 percent of the final
energy requirement in the heat sector and 5.1 percent of the fuels. As
part of the energy transition, it is planned to increase the proportion
of renewable energies in electricity consumption to 80 percent by 2050,
reduce primary energy consumption by 50 percent compared to 2008 and to
reduce greenhouse gas output with the EU targets by 80–95 percent
compared to 1990 . In total, at least 60 percent of energy consumption
is to be covered by renewable energies in 2050.
Germany was one of the seven most visited countries
around the world in 2016 with over 35 million foreign overnight guests a
year.
Around 4,000 of the 11,116 municipalities in Germany are
organized in tourism associations, 310 of which are recognized as spas,
seaside resorts and health resorts. There are 6,135 museums, 366
theaters, 34 leisure and experience parks, 45,000 tennis courts, 648
golf courses, 190,000 km of hiking trails, 40,000 kilometers of bike
pathways as well as holiday and themed roads.
Business and
congress tourism is of outstanding importance; Germany is the most
internationally most important exhibition location with several world
leading fairs. The international tourism exchange Berlin is the world's
leading tourism fair. There is also the biggest density of festivals in
Germany.
German art and cultural history, whose roots go back
to the times of the Celts, Germans and Romans, has produced style and
epoch-defining personalities since the Middle Ages. In a wide variety of
disciplines, German-speaking artists paved the way for new intellectual
currents and developments. Some of the most influential German artists
are among the protagonists of western civilisation. State grants for
culture (theatres, museums, art schools, etc.) from the federal
government, state governments and municipalities in Germany amounted to
more than eleven billion euros in 2017.
Since Germany did not
exist as a nation state for a long time, German culture has been defined
for centuries primarily by the common language; Even after the founding
of the Reich in 1871, Germany was often understood as a cultural nation.
The spread of mass media in the 20th century gave popular culture a high
priority in German society. The spread of the internet in the 21st
century has led to a differentiation of the cultural landscape and
changed the various niche cultures in their characteristics.
The
Goethe Institutes serve to spread the German language and culture
throughout the world. With a total of 158 locations, including liaison
offices, the institute is represented in 93 countries in 2013. According
to a survey in 22 countries for the BBC in 2013, Germany enjoyed the
highest international reputation among 16 countries surveyed for the
sixth time in a row since 2008. On average, 59 percent of those surveyed
rated Germany's influence and political activity as positive, while 15
percent had a negative image.
For specific areas of German
culture, see:
German language literature
German philosophy
music in Germany
German movie
television in Germany
architecture in Germany
World Heritage in Germany
Museums in
Germany
holidays in Germany
German cuisine
Fashion design in
Germany
German costumes
In Germany, 352 newspapers, 27 weekly newspapers, 7
Sunday newspapers, 2450 popular and 3753 trade journals are published
regularly.[209] Some of these media are published by the large
corporations Axel Springer SE, Bauer Media Group, Bertelsmann, Hubert
Burda Media and Funke Mediengruppe. There are 18 news agencies, of which
the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) and the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland
(RND) are the most important. The national daily newspapers with the
highest circulation (as of 2020) are the Bild (circulation 1.27
million), the Süddeutsche Zeitung (circulation 0.3 million), the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (circulation 0.2 million) and the
Handelsblatt (Circulation 0.14 million). By far the weekly newspaper
with the highest circulation is Die Zeit (circulation 0.55 million).
There are also political magazines such as Der Spiegel and magazines
geared towards popular topics such as Stern and Focus.
On
television, there are public broadcasters such as Das Erste and ZDF and
privately funded full channels, especially RTL, Sat.1, Pro7, RTL Zwei,
Kabel eins and VOX. In recent years, many regional stations and special
interest programs have been added.
Radio in Germany is organized
in two ways and is primarily regional in character. It is divided into
public radio, which is financed by the license fee, and private radio
providers, who generate their income mainly from advertising. At the end
of 2016, well over 300 broadcasters were registered, of which around 290
were commercial and more than 60 were public programs from ARD, mostly
broadcast on VHF, but increasingly also on DAB. Two judgments of the
Federal Constitutional Court from 1981 and 1986, which determined the
organization and the general conditions, are of great importance for the
development.
Spiegel Online (weekly coverage: 15%), t-online
(weekly coverage: 14%) and the ARD news portals (weekly coverage: 13%)
are the most frequently used online media. Active and passive media use
is around 9 hours a day (as of 2018).
According to the World Values Survey, in Germany,
which draws on the pluralistic tradition of the Enlightenment,
secular-rational values and personal self-development are valued. In the
areas of education, work-life balance, employment, environment, social
relationships, housing, security and subjective well-being, the
population gives satisfaction values above the average for developed
industrial nations and is only below the average for health. Overall,
Germany was above the OECD average in 2015 with 7 out of 10 points in
the OECD Better Life Index (6.5; Greece 5.5, Switzerland 7.6).
In
the UN World Happiness Report 2018, Germany ranked 15th out of 156
countries.
Germany has a long tradition of legally promoted
social balance. According to the Gini Index, the country is seen as a
society with low income inequality in an international comparison. The
German state offers its residents extensive legal entitlements to family
support and social security. The history of social insurance began in
the German Empire. Subsequent governments have gradually expanded them
and supplemented them with additional social transfer payments, which
means that a large part of the national budget is spent on social
affairs today.
Employees are required to be members of social
insurance, which consists of five pillars: health, accident, pension,
long-term care and unemployment insurance. Basic social security is
primarily financed by contributions from the insured, and deficits are
compensated for by taxpayers' money.
In 2010, 830,000 euro
millionaires (1% of the population) in Germany had total assets of 2,191
billion euros, while around 12.4 million people (15.3% of the
population) lived in relative poverty or were considered at risk of
poverty. In 2016, 19.7 percent of the population was at risk of poverty
or social exclusion (EU: 23.5%).
The domestic transfer payments
include the financial equalization of the federal states, which obliges
federal states with high tax revenues to give part of their income to
less well-off states so that the living conditions in Germany do not
differ too much. The solidarity surcharge levied on income tax is
intended to alleviate the burden of division in the new federal states.
The General Equal Treatment Act is intended to prevent
discrimination based on gender, race, ethnic origin, religion or belief,
disability, age or sexual identity (e.g. homosexuality).
The German healthcare system is highly developed, as
evidenced by the very low rate of infant mortality of around 3.5 boys
and 3.0 girls per 1000 births and a high life expectancy, which in 2016
was 78.2 years for men and 83 1 for women. In 2015, poor men had a life
expectancy of 70.1 years, wealthy men 80.9 years (women: 76.9 and 85.3
years). In 2015, a study by the OECD showed that patients in Germany had
short waiting times, low personal financial outlay and plenty of choice.
Prevention, on the other hand, could be improved, as shown by a high
number of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. The
quality is shown, among other things, by the fact that a stroke is often
survived. The number of hospital stays and operations is in the top
group internationally, but so are the costs of medication; In 2013,
healthcare expenditure accounted for 11 percent of GDP (OECD average:
just under 9 percent).
The healthcare system includes service
providers such as doctors, pharmacists, nursing staff, the state
(federal, state and local), health, accident, nursing care and pension
insurance, the associations of statutory health insurance physicians,
employers' and employees' associations, other interest groups and
patients, partly represented by associations and self-help
organizations. Hospitals are often run by non-profit organizations, but
are increasingly being privatised. Other care services are largely
provided privately by freelancers (doctors and pharmacists in private
practice and companies, for example in the pharmaceutical and medical
technology industry). The state is only involved as a service provider
with health authorities, community hospitals and university clinics.
The majority of the population belongs to the statutory health
insurance (GKV), whose contributions are mainly based on the level of
income. Family members without their own income are often insured at no
additional cost. The entitlement to benefits is independent of the
contribution amount. Around 10.8 percent of those insured had private
health insurance in 2017.
Today's German education system has its roots, among
other things, in the Humboldtian educational ideal, which was once
exemplary worldwide, and the Prussian educational reforms. Its design is
the responsibility of the federal states ("cultural sovereignty"), but
is coordinated by nationwide conferences of the ministers of education,
which also set common educational standards. Depending on the federal
state, there are pre-school periods and compulsory schooling for nine to
thirteen years. Attending general education schools lasts at least nine
years. After that, secondary schools or vocational schools can be
attended. Most German federal states have a structured school system
with Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, but there are tendencies
towards more comprehensive schools and all-day schools. Depending on the
federal state, the university entrance qualification is acquired after
twelve or thirteen school years.
Virtually all young adults go to
post-school education. Apprentices in companies usually attend
vocational school one or two days a week, which is known around the
world as a successful model of dual training. The academic equivalent is
the dual study program. Students can choose between university and
application-oriented universities (universities of applied sciences).
The proportion of university graduates has risen steadily since the
1970s.
Professional development also plays a major role. The
Federal Employment Agency provides further training vouchers for the
unemployed. Before starting their vocational training, young people can
also complete so-called voluntary services, such as a voluntary social
year or a voluntary ecological year. Other popular transitional
activities are voluntary military service and stays abroad, for example
in the form of work & travel or youth exchanges.
In school
performance tests, Germany often performs only averagely or even below
average in a global comparison. In the last PISA studies, Germany was
able to improve: In the PISA ranking of 2015, German students achieved
16th place out of 72 in mathematics, 15th place in natural sciences and
10th place in reading comprehension. The performance of German
schoolchildren was thus above the OECD average in all three categories.
However, the OECD criticizes German education policy in the PISA
studies, since the school success of children from socially or
educationally disadvantaged families and with a migration background is
below average. Contrary to the reform efforts of the past few decades,
it is still statistically significantly less likely that working-class
children achieve the Abitur (general higher education entrance
qualification) or a university degree than children from the middle or
upper classes. In addition, there would be a lack of individual
differentiation and support for both high-performing and weak students.
Expenditure on education (4.6% of gross domestic product) is below the
average in an OECD comparison. School support at primary school age is
considered to be in need of improvement, especially with regard to
childcare options and targeted support for weaker students.
In
2011, about 2.3 million (4%) of the working-age population were
considered completely illiterate and 7.5 million functionally
illiterate.
Germany is an internationally important location for
technology and science. Since the industrial revolution, German-speaking
researchers have been instrumental in founding empirical sciences. In
particular, the economic performance of a wide variety of industries and
the transfer of knowledge into practice were promoted by the creative
work of engineers. Around 8 percent of all patents filed worldwide under
the PCT in 2016 came from Germany; Germany thus ranked fourth behind the
USA, Japan and China.
In Germany, universities, technical
universities and technical colleges are institutions for research and
scientific teaching. (Technical) universities are authorized to conduct
doctorate and habilitation procedures. Both procedures are intended to
provide evidence of education and contain scientific findings. With the
introduction of international titles in the course of the Bologna
process, the previous separation of degrees between universities of
applied sciences and universities is being softened in the academic
education sector. Individual higher education institutions do not
provide tertiary education at all, but are set up for postgraduate
education or exclusively for doctorates and habilitation. Most German
universities are publicly funded, but their research is financed by
third-party funds (German Research Foundation, foundations, companies
and others).
In addition to the universities, there are a large
number of research organizations that are active throughout Germany and
beyond. In the process, a system was created in Germany for the division
of labor between the universities and between the universities and
non-university research institutions. The Max Planck Society is
committed to basic research. It runs 79 institutes in Germany and has an
annual budget of 1.8 billion euros. The Helmholtz Association is the
largest scientific society in Germany and operates 15 so-called large
research centers that work on interdisciplinary scientific complexes.
The Fraunhofer Society is the largest organization of applied research.
In its 56 institutes, it takes up the results of basic research and
tries to develop them economically. It provides the economy with the
service of contract research. She gained worldwide fame through the
development of the MP3 audio format. It is one of the most important
patent applicants and owners in Germany. The Leibniz Association is an
association of independent research institutions that work in both basic
and applied research.
Expenditure by state universities and
colleges in Germany (also referred to as tertiary education in Germany)
amounted to over 64 billion euros in 2020 (in 2005: 30.9 billion euros),
which is mainly financed from federal and state tax revenues . Around
2.9 million students studied at universities and colleges in Germany in
2020. Of these, about 14% were foreign students.
Non-university
institutes such as the Fraunhofer Society, Helmholtz Association,
Leibniz Association, Max Planck Society or the Academies of Sciences
received a further 15.6 billion euros. Total spending on education,
research and science in Germany in 2020 was around 334 billion euros.
Numerous researchers from all areas of modern science come from
Germany. More than 100 Nobel Prize winners are assigned to the country.
With their theories, Albert Einstein and Max Planck established
important pillars of theoretical physics, on which Werner Heisenberg and
Max Born, for example, were able to build. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, the
first winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, discovered and examined the
X-rays named after him, which still play an important role today in
medical diagnostics and materials testing, among other things. Heinrich
Hertz wrote important works on electromagnetic radiation, which are
decisive for today's telecommunications technology. The developments by
Karl von Drais, Nikolaus Otto, Rudolf Diesel, Gottlieb Daimler and Carl
Benz have revolutionized transport, and the Bunsen burners and zeppelins
named after their inventors are well known around the world. German
aerospace did decisive pioneering work in the field of space travel and
space research and today has an efficient space agency in the German
Aerospace Center (DLR). Germany is also the most contributory member
country to the European Space Agency (ESA).
Chemical research was
shaped by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Otto Hahn and Justus von Liebig, among
others. With their successful inventions, names such as Johannes
Gutenberg, Werner von Siemens, Wernher von Braun, Konrad Zuse and
Philipp Reis are part of the general technological education. Many
important mathematicians were also born in Germany, such as Adam Ries,
Friedrich Bessel, Richard Dedekind, Carl Friedrich Gauss, David Hilbert,
Emmy Noether, Bernhard Riemann, Karl Weierstrass and Johannes Müller
(Regiomontanus). Other important German researchers and scientists are
the astronomer Johannes Kepler, the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann,
the biologist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the polymath Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz, the natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt, the
religious researcher Max Müller, the historian Theodor Mommsen, and the
sociologist Max Weber and the medical researcher Robert Koch.