Welcome to the Germany Portal!
Willkommen im Deutschland-Portal!
Germany (German: Deutschland), officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north and the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.
Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,578 square kilometres (138,062 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying entirely in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a very decentralized country. Its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport.
In 1871, Germany became a nation-state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the Revolution of 1918–19, the empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to World War II, and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American, British, and French occupation zones, and East Germany, formed from the western part of the Soviet occupation zone, reduced by the newly established Oder-Neisse line. Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990.
Today, Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor. It is a great power with a strong economy. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993. Read more...
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The flag of Germany is a tricolour consisting of three equal horizontal bands displaying the national colours of Germany: black, red and gold.
The black-red-gold tricolour first appeared in the early 19th century and achieved prominence during the 1848 revolution. The short-lived Frankfurt Parliament of 1848–50 proposed the tricolour as a flag for a united and democratic German state. With the formation of the Weimar Republic after World War I, the tricolour was adopted as the national flag of Germany. Following World War II, the tricolour was designated as the flag of both West and East Germany. The two flags were identical until 1959, when socialist symbols were added to the East German flag. Since reunification on 3 October 1990, the black-red-gold tricolour has remained the flag of Germany.
The flag of Germany has not always used black, red and gold as its colours. After the Austro–Prussian War in 1866, the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation adopted a tricolour of black-white-red as its flag. This flag later became the flag of the German Empire, formed following the unification of Germany in 1871, and was used until 1918. Black, white and red were reintroduced as the German national colours with the establishment of Nazi Germany in 1933.
The colour schemes of black-red-gold and black-white-red have played an important role in the history of Germany and have had various meanings. The colours of the modern flag are associated with the republican democracy formed after World War II, and represent German unity and freedom: not only the freedom of Germany, but also the personal freedom of the German people. More...
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Anniversaries for May 19
- 1762 – Birth of philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- 1891 – Birth of World War I flying ace Oswald Boelcke
- 1935 – The first section of the Autobahn system is opened
- 1993 – Heide Simonis becomes minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein as the first woman to hold such a post
Did you know...
- ... that Oksana Lyniv founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in 2016 and conducted them in thirty concerts across ten music festivals in 2022?
- ... that ancient humans cared for a 14,000-year-old puppy?
- ... that a reviewer described the approach of soprano Magdalena Hinterdobler to her role as Grete in Zemlinsky's Der Traumgörge as "bold" and "sassy"?
- ... that Thomas Mann insisted on omitting a passage on homoeroticism in the English translation of his work "On the German Republic"?
- ... that Heike Heubach became the first deaf member of the German Bundestag?
- ... that in opposition to his parents, opera star Joseph Schwarz began his career by running away from home to join a band of traveling minstrels?
- ... that Robert Winterberg's 1911 operetta Die Dame in Rot was adapted into English for Broadway?
- ... that in 1933 Nazi sympathisers attempted to kidnap two German-Jewish filmmakers in Liechtenstein?
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A list of articles needing cleanup associated with this project is available. See also the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.
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- Requests: Columbiahalle , German Archaeological Institute at Rome , Deutsche Familienversicherung , Dietlof von Arnim-Boitzenburg , Hennes Bender , Georg Bernhard (1875–1944), Eduard Georg von Bethusy-Huc , Rolf Brandt (1886–1953), Jan Philipp Burgard , Georg Arbogast von und zu Franckenstein , Ferdinand Heribert von Galen , Herbert Helmrich , Monty Jacobs (1875–1945), Hans Katzer , Siegfried Kauder , Heide Keller, Matze Knop , Isidor Levy (1852–1929), Markus Löning , Anke Plättner , Hans Heinrich X. Fürst von Pless , Gerd Poppe , Victor-Emanuel Preusker , Hans Sauer (inventor) , Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg , Paul Schlesinger (1878-1928),Oscar Schneider , Hajo Schumacher , Otto Theodor von Seydewitz , Dorothea Siems , Werner Sonne , Anton Stark , Udo zu Stolberg-Wernigerode , Christoph Strässer , Torsten Sträter , Joseph von Utzschneider , Jürgen Wieshoff , Hans Wilhelmi ,
- Unreferenced: Unreferenced BLPs, Bundesautobahn 93, Benjamin Trinks, Steeler (German band), Amelie Beese, Zoologisches Museum in Kiel, Emil Krebs, Prussian semaphore system, Partenstein, Peter Krieg, Porsche 597, Christa Bauch, Curt Cress, Stefan Beuse
- Cleanup: 53541 issues in total as of 2024-03-03
- Translate: Articles needing translation from German Wikipedia
- Stubs: Albersdorf, Thuringia, Ingo Friedrich, Berndt Seite, Federal Social Court; 107 articles in Category:German MEP stubs
- Update: Deutsches Wörterbuch
- Portal maintenance: Update News, Did you know, announcements and the todo list
- Orphans: Orphaned articles in Germany
- Photo: Take/Add requested photographs
- Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character ",".
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