Group	Germans ''Deutsche''
Population	ca. 100–150 million
Regions	75 million
Region1	see below; see also Ethnic Germans.
Langs	German: High German (Upper German, Central German), Low German (see German dialects)
Rels	Roman Catholic, Protestant (chiefly Lutheran)
Related	Austrians, Swiss Germans, other Germanic peoples }}

The Germans (''Deutsche'') are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term ''Germans'' has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages.

Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, about 66–75 million consider themselves Germans. There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry mainly in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, France, Russia, Chile, Poland, Australia and Romania who most likely are not native speakers of German. Thus, the total number of Germans worldwide lies between 66 and 160 million, depending on the criteria applied (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans, partial German ancestry, etc.).

Today, peoples from countries with a German-speaking majority or significant German-speaking population groups other than Germany, such as Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, have developed their own national identity and usually do not refer to themselves as Germans in a modern context.

Name

The German term ''Deutsche'' originates from the Old High German word ''diutisc'' (from ''diot'' "people"), referring to the Germanic "language of the people". It not clear that how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German.

Used as a noun, ''ein diutscher'' in the sense of "a German" emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century.

The Old French term ''alemans'' is taken from the name of the Alamanni. It was loaned into Middle English as ''almains'' in the early 14th century. The word ''dutch'' is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic ("Dutch" and "German") dialects and their speakers.

While in most the Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Swabians or Alamanni (some, like standard Italian, retain an older borrowing of the endonym), the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names of the Germans was taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of '' '' (singular ''''), originally with a meaning "foreigner, one who does not speak [Slavic]".

The English term ''Germans'' is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term ''Germani'' used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced ''Dutch'' and ''Almains'', the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century.

History

The Germans are a Germanic people, which as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. From the multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) left a core territory that was to become Germany.

Origins

The area of modern-day Germany in the European Iron Age was divided into the (Celtic) La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the (Germanic) Jastorf culture in Northern Germany.

The Germanic peoples during the Migrations Period came into contact with other peoples; in the case of the populations settling in the territory of modern Germany, they encountered Celts to the south, and Balts and Slavs towards the east.

The ''Limes Germanicus'' was breached in AD 260. Migrating Germanic tribes commingled with the local Gallo-Roman populations in what is now Swabia and Bavaria. The migration-period peoples who would coalesce into a "German" ethnicity were the Saxons, Franci, Thuringii, Alamanni and Bavarii. By the 800s, the territory of modern Germany had been united under the rule of Charlemagne. Much of what is now Eastern Germany became Slavonic-speaking (Sorbs and Veleti), after these areas were vacated by Germanic tribes (Vandals, Lombards, Burgundians and Suebi amongst others) which had migrated into the former areas of the Roman Empire.

Medieval history

A German ethnicity emerged in the course of the Middle Ages, ultimately as a result of the formation of the kingdom of Germany within East Francia and later the Holy Roman Empire, beginning in the 9th century. The process was gradual and lacked any clear definition, and the use of exonyms designating "the Germans" develops only during the High Middle Ages. The title of ''rex teutonicum'' "King of the Germans" is first used in the late 11th century, by the chancery of Pope Gregory VII. Natively, the term ''ein diutscher'' "a German" is used of the people of Germany from the 12th century.

After Christianization, the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers led German expansion and settlement in areas inhabited by Slavs and Balts (Ostsiedlung). Massive German settlement led to their assimilation of Baltic (Old Prussians) and Slavic (Wends) populations, who were exhausted by previous warfare. At the same time, naval innovations led to a German domination of trade in the Baltic Sea and parts of Eastern Europe through the Hanseatic League. Along the trade routes, Hanseatic trade stations became centers of German culture. German town law ''(Stadtrecht)'' was promoted by the presence of large, relatively wealthy German populations and their influence on political power. Thus people who would be considered "Germans", with a common culture, language, and worldview different from that of the surrounding rural peoples, colonized trading towns as far north of present-day Germany as Bergen (in Norway), Stockholm (in Sweden), and Vyborg (now in Russia). The Hanseatic League was not exclusively German in any ethnic sense: many towns who joined the league were outside the Holy Roman Empire and a number of them may only loosely be characterized as ''German''. The Empire was not entirely German either.

Early Modern period

From the late 15th century, the Holy Roman Empire came to be known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, even though it was not exclusively German, and notably included sizeable Slavic minorities. The Thirty Years' War, a series of conflicts fought mainly in the territory of modern Germany, weakened the coherence of the Holy Roman Empire, leading to the ''Kleinstaaterei'' in 18th-century Germany.

The Napoleonic Wars were the cause of the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and ultimately the cause for the quest for a German nation state in 19th-century German nationalism. After the Congress of Vienna, Austria and Prussia emerged as two competitors. Austria, trying to remain the dominant power in Central Europe, led the way in the terms of the Congress of Vienna. The Congress of Vienna was essentially conservative, assuring that little would change in Europe and preventing Germany from uniting. These terms came to a sudden halt following the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War in 1856, paving the way for German unification in the 1860s.

In 1870, after France attacked Prussia, Prussia and its new allies in Southern Germany (among them Bavaria) were victorious in the Franco-Prussian War. It created the German Empire as a German nation-state, effectively excluding the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy and Liechtenstein. Integrating the German speaking Austrians nevertheless remained a desire for many Germans and Austrians, especially among the liberals, the social democrats and also the Catholics who were a minority in Germany.

During the 19th century in the German territories, rapid population growth due to lower death rates, combined with poverty, spurred millions of Germans to emigrate, chiefly to the United States. Today, roughly 17% of the United States' population (23% of the white population) is of mainly German ancestry.

Twentieth century

The dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I led to a strong desire of the population of the new Republic of German Austria to be integrated into Germany or Switzerland. This was, however, prevented by the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, attempted to unite all people they claimed Germans (''Volksdeutsche'') into one realm, including ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, many of whom had emigrated more than one hundred fifty years before and developed separate cultures in their new lands. This idea was initially welcomed by many ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Danzig and western Lithuania. The Swiss resisted the idea. They had viewed themselves as a distinctly separate nation since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.

After World War II, eastern European nations, including areas annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland, expelled ethnic Germans from their territories, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. 14 million ethnic German refugees fled to western Germany and Europe, the United States, Canada, and South America.

After WWII, Austrians increasingly saw themselves as a nation distinct from other German-speaking areas of Europe. Recent polls show that no more than 6% of the German-speaking Austrians consider themselves as "Germans". Austrian identity was emphasized along with the "first-victim of Nazism" theory. Today over 80 percent of the Austrians see themselves as an independent nation.

1945 to present

Between 1950 and 1987, about 1.4 million ethnic Germans and their dependants, mostly from Poland and Romania, arrived in Germany under special provisions of right of return. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain since 1987, 3 million "Aussiedler" – ethnic Germans, mainly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union – took advantage of Germany's law of return to leave the ''"land of their birth"'' for Germany. Approximately 2 million, just from the territories of the former Soviet Union, have resettled in Germany since the late 1980s. On the other hand, significant numbers of ethnic Germans have moved from Germany to other European countries, especially Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain and Portugal.

Genetics

The predominant Y-chromosome haplogroup among Germans is I1 and R1a followed by R1b; the predominant mitochondrial haplogroup is H, followed by U and T.

Language

[[Image:Europe germanic-languages 2.PNG|240px|thumb|right|West Germanic languages North Germanic languages ]] The native language of Germans is German a Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English, Dutch and Scandinavian. Spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union.

There are several dialects of German:

High German

*Upper German

**the Bavarians (ca. 10 million) form the Austro-Bavarian linguistic group, together with those Austrians who speak German and do not live in Vorarlberg and the western Tyrol district of Reutte.

**the Swabians (ca. 10 million) form the Alemannic group, together with the Alemannic Swiss, Liechtensteiners, Alsatians and Vorarlbergians.

*Central German dialect group (ca. 45 million)

**West Central German

***Central Franconian (Ripuarian, Kölsch), forms a dialectal unity with Luxembourgish

***Rhine Franconian

****Hessian

**East Central German

**Standard German

***Thuringian

***Upper Saxon

***High Prussian

***German Silesian

Low German (ca. 3–10 million), forms a dialectal unity with Dutch Low Saxon

*Low Saxon

*East Low German

Geographic distribution

Ethnic Germans form an important minority group in several countries in central and eastern Europe—(Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russia) as well as in Namibia (German Namibian), Brazil (German-Brazilian) (approx. 3% of the population), Argentina (German-Argentine) (1,5% ~ 7,5% of the population) and Chile (German-Chilean) (approx. 1% of the population).

Some groups may be classified as Ethnic Germans despite no longer having German as their mother tongue or belonging to a distinct German culture. Until the 1990s, two million Ethnic Germans lived throughout the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia and Kazakhstan.

In the United States 1990 census, 57 million people were fully or partly of German ancestry, forming the largest single ethnic group in the country. States with the highest percentage of Americans of German descent are in the northern Midwest (especially Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan) and the Mid-Atlantic state, Pennsylvania. But Germanic immigrant enclaves existed in many other states (e.g., the German Texans and the Denver, Colorado area) and to a lesser extent, the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington state).

Notable Ethnic German minorities also exist in other Anglosphere countries such as Canada (approx. 10% of the population) and Australia (approx. 4% of the population). As in the United States, most people of German descent in Canada and Australia have almost completely assimilated, culturally and linguistically, into the English-speaking mainstream.

Distribution of German citizens, German speakers, and people claiming German ancestry:

Ethnic Germans 66,420,000 50,000,000 5,000,000 3,200,000 600,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 812,000 460,000 266,000 255,000   153,000 120,344 60,000 40,000 40,000 30,000  6,400 3,900

country	German ancestry ||	Germans Abroad>German citizens	comments
	|	75,000,000	see Demographics of Germany
	|		see German American
		|		see German Brazilian
	|		see Canadians of German ethnicity
	|		see  German-Argentine
The (mainly and )	|	600,000	History of Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union>Germans in Russia, Germans of Kazakhstan, Volga Germans, Caucasus Germans
	|		predominant ethnic group of Alsace and Moselle; 970,000 with German dialects as mother tongue
	|		incl. 106,524 German-born. See German Australian
(in South Tyrol)	500,000
	|		see German Peruvian
	|	92,000	see German migration to the United Kingdom
	|		German immigrants
	|	266,000	see German immigration to Switzerland
	|		mainly in Opole Voivodeship, see German minority in Poland.
	150,000 ~ 200,000
	|		see Germans of Hungary
	80,000
	|		see Germans of Romania
	46,000
	|		see Germans in the Czech Republic
	|		German speaking Mennonites. See Ethnic Germans in Bolivia
	38,366	|		Eupen-Malmedy>German-speaking ethnic Belgians
	37,000
	33,000
	|		German Namibian
	25,000
	15,000–20,000
	11,797
	5000–10,000
	|		see German settlement in the Philippines
	|		see Germans of Serbia
	2,700
	2,700

Geographic distribution of native speakers of varieties of the German language:

Country !! German speaking population (outside Europe)
USA	5,000,000
Brazil	3,000,000
Argentina	500,000
Canada	450,000 – 620,000
Australia	110,000
South Africa	75,000 (German expatriate citizens alone)
Chile	40,000
Paraguay	30,000 – 40,000
Namibia	30,000 (German expatriate citizens alone)
Mexico	10,000
Venezuela	10,000

Culture

Literature

German literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages, with the most notable authors of the period being Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The ''Nibelungenlied'', whose author remains unknown, is also an important work of the epoch, as is the ''Thidrekssaga''. The fairy tales collections collected and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 19th century became famous throughout the world.

Theologian Luther, who translated the Bible into German, is widely credited for having set the basis for the modern "High German" language. Among the most admired German poets and authors are Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Hoffmann, Brecht, Heine and Schmidt. Nine Germans have won the Nobel Prize in literature: Theodor Mommsen, Paul von Heyse, Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Nelly Sachs, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Herta Müller.

Philosophy

Germany's influence on philosophy is historically significant and many notable German philosophers have helped shape Western philosophy since the Middle Ages. The rise of the modern natural sciences and the related decline of religion raised a series of questions, which recur throughout German philosophy, concerning the relationships between knowledge and faith, reason and emotion, and scientific, ethical, and artistic ways of seeing the world.

German philosophers have helped shape western philosophy from as early as the Middle Ages (Albertus Magnus). Later, Leibniz (17th century) and most importantly Kant played central roles in the history of philosophy. Kantianism inspired the work of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as well as German idealism defended by Fichte and Hegel. Marx and Engels developed communist theory in the second half of the 19th century while Heidegger and Gadamer pursued the tradition of German philosophy in the 20th century. A number of German intellectuals were also influential in sociology, most notably Adorno, Habermas, Horkheimer, Luhmann, Simmel, Tönnies, and Weber. The University of Berlin founded in 1810 by linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt served as an influential model for a number of modern western universities.

In the 21st century Germany has been an important country for the development of contemporary analytic philosophy in continental Europe, along with France, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.

Science

Germany has been the home of many famous inventors and engineers, such as Johannes Gutenberg, who is credited with the invention of movable type printing in Europe; Hans Geiger, the creator of the Geiger counter; and Konrad Zuse, who built the first computer. German inventors, engineers and industrialists such as Zeppelin, Daimler, Diesel, Otto, Wankel, Von Braun and Benz helped shape modern automotive and air transportation technology including the beginnings of space travel.

The work of Albert Einstein and Max Planck was crucial to the foundation of modern physics, which Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger developed further. They were preceded by such key physicists as Hermann von Helmholtz, Joseph von Fraunhofer, and Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, among others. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays, an accomplishment that made him the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. The Walhalla temple for "laudable and distinguished Germans", features a number of scientists, and is located east of Regensburg, in Bavaria.

Music

In the field of music, Germany claims some of the most renowned classical composers of the world including Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, who marked the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. Other composers of the Austro-German tradition who achieved international fame include Brahms, Wagner, Haydn, Schubert, Händel, Schumann, Liszt, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Johann Strauss II, Bruckner, Mahler, Telemann, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Orff, and most recently, Henze, Lachenmann, and Stockhausen.

As of 2006, Germany is the fifth largest music market in the world and has exerted a strong influence on Dance and Rock music, and pioneered trance music. Artists such as Herbert Grönemeyer, Scorpions, Rammstein, Nena, Dieter Bohlen, Tokio Hotel and Modern Talking have enjoyed international fame. German musicians and, particularly, the pioneering bands Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk have also contributed to the development of electronic music. Germany hosts many large rock music festivals annually. The Rock am Ring festival is the largest music festival in Germany, and among the largest in the world. German artists also make up a large percentage of Industrial music acts, which is called Neue Deutsche Härte. Germany hosts some of the largest Goth scenes and festivals in the entire world, with events like Wave-Gothic-Treffen and M'era Luna Festival easily attracting up to 30,000 people. Amongst Germany's famous artists there are various Dutch entertainers, such as Johannes Heesters, Rudi Carell and Sylvie van der Vaart.

Cinema

German cinema dates back to the very early years of the medium with the work of Max Skladanowsky. It was particularly influential during the years of the Weimar Republic with German expressionists such as Robert Wiene and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. The Nazi era produced mostly propaganda films although the work of Leni Riefenstahl still introduced new aesthetics in film. From the 1960s, New German Cinema directors such as Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder placed West-German cinema back onto the international stage with their often provocative films, while the ''Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft'' controlled film production in the GDR. More recently, films such as ''Das Boot'' (1981), ''The Never Ending Story'' (1984) ''Run Lola Run'' (1998), ''Das Experiment'' (2001), ''Good Bye Lenin!'' (2003), ''Gegen die Wand (Head-on)'' (2004) and ''Der Untergang (Downfall)'' (2004) have enjoyed international success. In 2007 the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film went to F.H. von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others. The Berlin Film Festival, held yearly since 1951, is one of the world's foremost film and cinemas festivals.

Art

Important German Renaissance painters include Albrecht Altdorfer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Matthias Grünewald, Hans Holbein the Younger and the well-known Albrecht Dürer. The most important Baroque artists from Germany are Cosmas Damian Asam. Further artists are the romantic Caspar David Friedrich, the surrealist Max Ernst, the conceptualist Joseph Beuys or the neo-expressionist Georg Baselitz.

Architecture

Architectural contributions from Germany include the Carolingian and Ottonian styles, important precursors of Romanesque. The region then produced significant works in styles such as the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. The nation was particularly important in the early modern movement through the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus movement identified with Walter Gropius. The Nazis closed these movements and favoured a type of neo-classicism. Since World War II, further important modern and post-modern structures have been built, particularly since the reunification of Berlin.

Religion

64.1 percent of the German population belongs to Christian denominations. 31.4 percent are Roman Catholic, and 32.7 percent are affiliated with Protestantism (the figures are known accurately because Germany imposes a church tax on those who disclose a religious affiliation / but there are many people, who are religious but not registered). The North and East is predominantly Protestant, the South and West rather Catholic. Nowadays there is a non-religious majority in Hamburg and the East German states. Germany formed a substantial part of the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Empire, but was also the source of Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. Historically, Germany had a substantial Jewish population. Only a few thousand people of Jewish origin remained in Germany after the Holocaust, but the German Jewish community now has approximately 100,000 members, many from the former Soviet Union. Germany also has a substantial Muslim minority, most of whom are from Turkey.

German theologians include Luther, Melanchthon, Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, and Rudolf Otto. Also Germany brought up many mystics including Meister Eckhart, Rudolf Steiner, Jakob Boehme, and some popes (e.g. Benedict XVI).

Cuisine

The "home cuisine" differs very much from the "restaurant cuisine". More traditional dishes can be found in restaurants. Cuisine differs also greatly according to regions (in the north people eat fish, in the Rhine region beer is replaced with wine, in Bavaria roasted pork is consumed) and season (in spring people eat white asparagus with ham and sauce hollandaise, in fall people eat green cabbage with a special kind of sausage and mustard and in winter/for Christmas people eat duck or goose with red cabbage, dumplings and brown gravy).

Sport

Sport forms an integral part of German life, as demonstrated by the fact that 27 million Germans are members of a sports club and an additional twelve million pursue such an activity individually. Football is by far the most popular sport, and the German Football Federation (Deutscher Fußballbund) with more than 6.3 million members is the largest athletic organisation in the country. It also attracts the greatest audience, with hundreds of thousands of spectators attending Bundesliga matches and millions more watching on television. The other two most popular sports in Germany are marksmanship and tennis represented by the German Marksmen’s Federation and the German Tennis Federation respectively, both including more than a million members. Other popular sports include handball, volleyball, basketball, and ice hockey. Germany has historically been one of the strongest contenders in the Olympic Games. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Germany finished fifth overall, whereas in the 2006 Winter Olympics Germany finished first.

Nationalism

Origins

Pan-Germanism's origins began in the early 19th century following the Napoleonic Wars. The wars launched a new movement that was born in France itself during the French Revolution. Nationalism during the 19th century threatened the old aristocratic regimes. Many ethnic groups of Central and Eastern Europe had been divided for centuries, ruled over by the old Monarchies of the Romanovs and the Habsburgs. Germans, for the most part, had been a loose and disunited people since the Reformation when the Holy Roman Empire was shattered into a patchwork of states. The new German nationalists, mostly young reformers such as Johann Tillmann of East Prussia, sought to unite all the German-speaking and ethnic-German (Volksdeutsche) people.

Unification

By the 1860s the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire were the two most powerful nations dominated by German-speaking elites. Both sought to expand their influence and territory. The Austrian Empire – like the Holy Roman Empire – was a multi-ethnic state, but German-speaking people there did not have an absolute numerical majority; the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one result of the growing nationalism of other ethnicities especially the Hungarians. Prussia under Otto von Bismarck would ride on the coat-tails of nationalism to unite all of modern-day Germany. The German Empire ("Second Reich") was created in 1871 following the proclamation of Wilhelm I as head of a union of German-speaking states, while disregarding millions of its non-German subjects who desired self-determination from German rule.

There was also a rejection of Roman Catholicism with the Away from Rome! movement calling for German speakers to identify with Lutheran or Old Catholic churches.

1918–1945

Following the defeat in World War I, influence of German-speaking elites over Central and Eastern Europe was greatly limited. At the treaty of Versailles Germany was substantially reduced in size. Austria-Hungary was split up. Rump-Austria, which to a certain extent corresponded to the German-speaking areas of Austria-Hungary (a complete split into language groups was impossible due to multi-lingual areas and language-exclaves) adopted the name "German-Austria" (). The name German-Austria was forbidden by the victorious powers of World War I. Volga Germans living in the Soviet Union were interned in gulags or forcibly relocated during the second world war.

The ''Heim ins Reich'' initiative (German: literally ''Home into the Empire'', meaning ''Back to Reich'', see Reich) was a policy pursued by Nazi Germany which attempted to convince people of German descent living outside of Germany (such as Sudetenland) that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into a greater Germany.

After 1945

World War II brought about the decline of Pan-Germanism, much as World War I had led to the demise of Pan-Slavism. The Germans in Central and Eastern Europe were expelled, parts of Germany itself were devastated, and the country was divided, firstly into Russian, French, American, and British zones and then into West Germany and East Germany. To add to the disaster, Germany suffered even larger territorial losses than it did in the First World War, with huge portions of eastern Germany directly annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland. The scale of the Germans' defeat was unprecedented. Nationalism and Pan-Germanism became almost taboo because they had been used so destructively by the Nazis. Indeed, the word "Volksdeutscher" in reference to ethnic Germans naturalized during WWII later developed into a mild epithet.

However, the reunification of Germany in 1990 revived the old debates. The fear of nationalistic misuse of Pan-Germanism nevertheless remains strong. But the overwhelming majority of Germans today are not chauvinistic in nationalism, but in 2006 and again in 2010, the German National Football Team won third place in the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups, ignited a positive scene of German pride, in fanfare when it comes to sport.

See also

Germanic peoples

Ethnic Germans, also referred to as the German diaspora

German eastward expansion

Names for the German language

Pan-Germanism

German question

Unification of Germany

Organised persecution of ethnic Germans

Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)

List of Germans

List of Alsatians and Lorrainians

List of Austrians

List of Swiss people

List of terms used for Germans

Ethnic groups in Europe

Genetic history of Europe

Anti-German sentiment

German exodus from Eastern Europe

References

External links

Famous Germans

German, Austrian and Swiss inventors

Top 100 Germans

Germans – First arrivals

Category:Ethnic groups in Europe Category:German people Category:Germanic peoples Category:Ethnic groups in Germany Category:West Germanic peoples

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name	I Don't Dance
cover size	200
artist	Lucas Grabeel and Corbin Bleu
album	High School Musical 2
released
format	Digital Download, CD
recorded	2006–2007
genre	Dance-pop, hip hop, R&B;
length	3:37
label	Walt Disney
writer	Matthew Gerrard, Robbie Nevil, Giancarlo Binando
producer	Matthew Gerrard
chronology	High School Musical singles
last single	"Fabulous"(2007)
this single	"I Don't Dance"(2007)
next single	"Now or Never"(2008)
misc	}}

"I Don't Dance" is a song performed by actor/singers Lucas Grabeel and Corbin Bleu in the television movie ''High School Musical 2'', released in 2007. It is one of seven songs from the soundtrack ''High School Musical 2'' to reach the Billboard Hot 100. It was also named as the official theme song for the 2007 Little League World Series.

Scene in ''High School Musical 2''

In the film, ''High School Musical 2'', the song is performed on a baseball field. Actor Corbin Bleu was beaned on three different occasions while filming the scene. On the challenges of filming the scene, Bleu stated "It's bad enough that you're mixing acting with dancing and singing all at once. But then you throw sports into it and it's incredibly difficult — especially for me."

Reviews

The ''Village Voice'''s Tom Breihan called the song "the movie's best dance-number" and commented how the routine managed to "include rapping and swing-dancing, which sort of blew [his] mind." Reviewer Erin Nolan referred to the song as "insanely catchy." Not all reviews were positive though. The reviewer for the Charlotte Observer called the tune "excruciating," ''The New York Times'' felt that the "HSM2 was the shallowest movie he had ever seen" was "a superb idea, as it plays off both the Latinization of the major leagues (by letting a little salsa into the hip-hop) and the spectacular pitcher-batter operetta showdowns of recent seasons," but that the camera work let the scene down noting that "viewers never get a sustained look at the choreography ... and for that reason it’s hard to appreciate specific dancers or their clever configuration."

Promotional video

The promotional video for the song blends scenes from the movie's dance sequence with clips of notable Major league baseball players including Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Jimmy Rollins, Jake Peavy, Justin Verlander, Craig Biggio, David Eckstein, So Taguchi, Bronson Arroyo, C. C. Sabathia, Nick Swisher, Jeff Francoeur, Brian McCann, B.J. Upton, Bill Hall, J. J. Hardy, Luis Gonzalez, Takashi Saito, Torii Hunter, Shane Victorino, and Nomar Garciaparra. The video was shown in Major and Minor League ballparks throughout the country during the summer of 2007, and it was showcased on The Baseball Youth Road Trip, a summer tour presented by the Major League Baseball Players Association stopping at youth baseball tournaments and Minor League Baseball parks. The ''I Don't Dance'' music video shown at over sixty youth baseball events during the Road Trip, culminating at the Little League World Series, where it served as the theme song for the games.

Formats and tracklistings

A promotional CD single for the song was released in Portugal but without an English version of "I Don't Dance" and a music video was also made. The music video can be seen on High School Musical 2 2-Disc Deluxe Dance Edition DVD.

{{tracklist | title1 = Eu Não Danço (Expensive Soul feat. Bianca) | length1 = 03:30 | title2 = Eu Não Danço (Music video, computer track) | length2 = 03:35 (Music video version) }}

Chart performance

It made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 74 in the chart for September 1, 2007.

Charts

!Chart (2008)	!Peakposition
Canadian Hot 100
U.S. ''Billboard'' Pop 100

References

Category:2007 songs Category:2007 Little League World Series Category:Corbin Bleu songs Category:Lucas Grabeel songs Category:Songs from High School Musical Category:Songs written by Matthew Gerrard Category:Songs written by Robbie Nevil

es:I Don't Dance id:I Don't Dance vi:I Don't Dance

name	Basil Fawlty
series	Fawlty Towers
years	1975–79
first	"A Touch of Class"(1975)
last	"Basil the Rat"(1979)''
creator	John Cleese
introducer	Connie Booth
portrayer	John Cleese
occupation	Hotelier
wife	Sybil Fawlty (1958—) }}

Basil Fawlty is the main character of the British sitcom ''Fawlty Towers'', played by John Cleese. The character is often thought of as an iconic British comedy character, and has been deemed unforgettable despite only a dozen half-hour episodes ever being made.

Personality

Torquay hotellier Basil is a snobbish, miserly, xenophobic and sexually repressed paranoiac misanthrope who is desperate to belong to a higher social class. He sees the successful running of the hotel as a means of achieving this ("''turn it into an establishment of class...''"), yet his job requires him to be pleasant to people he despises or aspires to be above socially. His unstoppable wife Sybil will often get in the way of Basil's treatment towards the guests, often trying to bridge the peace, or pick up the pieces, to quite limited success.

According to Manuel in "Communication Problems" Basil is from Swanage.

Basil has strong socially conservative views regarding almost everything he comes across. This is especially apparent in "The Wedding Party", when he shows open disgust towards a young unmarried couple with an active sex life. He despises socialism: while concussed following an incident with a fire extinguisher in "The Germans", he diverts from a rant on fire extinguishers to exclaim "''What's happening to this country? It's bloody Wilson''". He is apparently a supporter of Thatcherism, taking offence at a comment that 'The Wit of Margaret Thatcher' would be "''one of the world's shortest books''".

He is terrified of his wife's sharp tongue, but wishes to stand up to her, and his plans often conflict with hers. She is often verbally abusive towards him (describing him as "an ageing, brilliantined stick insect") and though he is much taller than Sybil, he often finds himself on the receiving end of her temper, expressed verbally or physically. Basil usually turns to Manuel or Polly to help him with whatever scheme he has planned, while trying his best to prevent Sybil from finding out, and as such he gained a reputation as an unabashed prevaricator.

Basil takes many of his frustrations out on the hapless Manuel, physically abusing him in a variety of ways. On occasions he also assaults others, such as strangling the guest Mr. Hutchinson in "The Hotel Inspectors", kneeing Major Gowen in "Basil the Rat", and even—most famously—striking his "vicious bastard" of a car in "Gourmet Night" with a tree branch when it refuses to move. "The Germans" is the sixth episode. It is best remembered for its line "Don't mention the war" and Cleese's "funny walk" when he is impersonating Adolf Hitler.

Another eccentricity affecting Basil is that of occasionally swapping words around in a sentence while propounding a falsehood, for instance in "The Anniversary" when he announces to the party guests that it's "''perfectly Sybil! Simple's not well. She's lost her throat and her voice hurts''", and – less obviously – reassuring himself as much as his wife in "The Wedding Party" that the sound of knocking on his bedroom door was "probably some key who forgot the guest for their door". He also has difficulty disconnecting his thought-process from unrelated events, as in "The Wedding Party", when he is looking through Polly's sketchbook of life-drawing pictures and answers the telephone with, "Hello, Fawlty Titties?" or in "The Psychiatrist", where, after inadvertently staining the chest area of a female guest with paint, he realises that Sybil has noticed, but then in confusion puts his hands all over the woman's breasts as a means of stopping her from seeing it.

Basil is known to have served in the British Army during the Korean War, possibly as part of his National Service. He claims: ''"I fought in the Korean War, you know, I killed four men"'' to which his wife jokingly replies ''"he was in the Catering Corps; he used to poison them"''. He is often seen wearing a military tie and a military-type moustache. Fawlty also claims to have sustained a shrapnel injury to his leg in the Korean War, which has a tendency to flare up at convenient moments - usually when Sybil asks him an awkward question.

John Cleese himself described Basil as thinking that he could run a first-rate hotel if he didn't have all the guests getting in the way. He has also made the point that on account of Basil's inner need to conflict with his wife's wishes, "Basil couldn't be Basil if he didn't have Sybil".

Basil seems to have an attachment to any upper-class guests visiting, such as Lord Melbury, Mrs Peignoir (a wealthy French antique dealer) and Major Gowen, a recurring war veteran, although Basil is sometimes scalding towards him, frequently alluding to his senility and his attachment to the bar ("''drunken old sod''"). This is probably because he aspires to be in the upper echelons of society. He has particular respect for doctors, having aspired to be one himself (though Sybil says that he couldn't even have been a tree surgeon: ''couldn't stand the sight of sap''), and shows a reverential attitude to Dr. & Dr. Abbott in "The Psychiatrist" (until he learns that Dr. Abbott is a psychiatrist), and Dr. Price in "The Kipper and the Corpse" (until Dr. Price begins to ask awkward questions about the death of Mr. Leeman, and inconveniently requests sausages for breakfast).

Basil is constantly maniacally depressed, intimidating towards guests, and liable to pick up a tail-end of a situation and turning it into a farcical misunderstanding. Basil is known for his tight-fisted mannerisms, employing incompetent builder O'Reilly in "The Builders" because he was cheap, and more importantly Manuel, for the same reason.

Basil has been married to Sybil for fifteen years, as stated in the episode "The Anniversary". He very rarely shows any signs of real love for his long-suffering wife ("my little piranha-fish" is one of the kindest epithets he bestows on her), and vice-versa. Sybil's friend Audrey — who is, with exception to "The Anniversary", an unseen character— will often be the only support she gets. Ironically, "The Anniversary" was one of the few episodes in which Basil was the one trying to be nice, and Sybil was the one who had misread the situation (i.e., thinking he had forgotten what day it was).

John Cleese reprised the role of Basil in the song "Don't Mention the War", based on the situation in the episode "The Germans", for the 2006 Germany FIFA World Cup. This same phrase, "Don't Mention the War", was used as the title of the first episode of a 5-part BBC documentary series ''When Rover Met BMW''.

Origins

Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Monty Python team's stay in the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay. Cleese and Booth stayed on at the hotel after filming for the Python show had finished. The owner, Mr. Donald Sinclair, was very rude, throwing a bus timetable at a guest who asked when the next bus to town would arrive and placing Eric Idle's suitcase behind a wall in the garden in case it contained a bomb (actually it contained a ticking alarm clock). He also criticised the American-born Terry Gilliam's table manners for being too American (he had the fork in the "wrong" hand while eating), and it is reasonable to assume that his treatment of Gilliam partially inspired Basil's treatment of an American visitor in the episode "Waldorf Salad". Cleese used the name "Donald Sinclair" for his character in the 2001 film ''Rat Race''. In the episode "The Builders", Fawlty refers to a local hotel or restaurant called "Gleneagles" while talking to Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibbs. The name 'Basil' comes from Basil Street, where Cleese lived for some time.

Libel case

In 1989, Cleese successfully sued the ''Daily Mirror'' for libel when it described him becoming like his character Basil Fawlty.

Cultural references

In the British fantasy series ''Redwall'', an extremely sarcastic and imprudent anthropomorphic hare, "Basil Stag Hare", makes an appearance. He is somewhat aristocratic, and an ex-serviceman, who sometimes makes reference to his "honourable war wound". A running gag is his 'Officer and a Gentleman' way and his "tally ho!" slang. Author Brian Jacques claims to have based his name and character on Basil Fawlty.

References

Category:Fawlty Towers characters Category:Fictional English people Category:Fictional hoteliers Category:Fictional versions of real people Category:Fictional Korean War veterans Category:Fictional businesspeople

da:Basil Fawlty it:Basil Fawlty sv:Basil Fawlty

Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	David Cameron
Honorific-suffix	MP
Alt	A man, clean shaven, with short straight dark brown swept back hair wearing a suit jacket, white shirt and blue tie
Office	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	Nick Clegg
Term start	11 May 2010('''')
Predecessor	Gordon Brown
Office2	Leader of the Opposition
Monarch2	Elizabeth II
Primeminister2	Tony BlairGordon Brown
Term start2	6 December 2005
Term end2	11 May 2010
Predecessor2	Michael Howard
Successor2	Harriet Harman
Office3	Leader of the Conservative Party
Term start3	6 December 2005
Predecessor3	Michael Howard
Office4	Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills
Leader4	Michael Howard
Term start4	6 May 2005
Term end4	6 December 2005
Predecessor4	Tim Yeo
Successor4	David Willetts
Office5	Member of Parliament for Witney
Term start5	7 June 2001
Predecessor5	Shaun Woodward
Majority5	22,740 (39.4%)
Birth date	October 09, 1966
Birth place	London, England,United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Party	Conservative
Spouse	Samantha Sheffield(m. 1996–present)
Children	Ivan Reginald Ian (deceased)Nancy GwenArthur ElwenFlorence Rose Endellion
Relations	Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet(grandfather, deceased)Sir Ewen Cameron(great-great-grandfather)Sir William Dugdale (uncle)
Residence	10 Downing Street (Official)
Alma mater	Brasenose College, Oxford
Religion	Church of England
Website	Conservative Party website }}

David William Donald Cameron (; born 9 October 1966) is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament (MP).

Cameron studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford, gaining a first class honours degree. He then joined the Conservative Research Department and became Special Adviser to Norman Lamont, and then to Michael Howard. He was Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications for seven years.

A first candidacy for Parliament at Stafford in 1997 ended in defeat, but Cameron was elected in 2001 as the Member of Parliament for the Oxfordshire constituency of Witney. He was promoted to the Opposition front bench two years later, and rose rapidly to become head of policy co-ordination during the 2005 general election campaign. With a public image of a young, moderate candidate who would appeal to young voters, he won the Conservative leadership election in 2005.

In the 2010 general election held on 6 May, the Conservatives won 307 seats in a hung parliament and Cameron was appointed Prime Minister on 11 May 2010, at the head of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. At the age of 43, Cameron became the youngest British Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool 198 years earlier. Cameron leads the first coalition government of the United Kingdom since the Second World War.

Family

David Cameron is the younger son of stockbroker Ian Donald Cameron (12 October 1932 – 8 September 2010) and his wife Mary Fleur (née Mount, born 1934, a retired Justice of the Peace, daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet). His father, Ian, was born with both legs deformed and underwent repeated operations to correct them. Cameron's parents married on 20 October 1962. He was born in London, and brought up in Peasemore, Berkshire. Cameron has a brother, Allan Alexander (born 1963, a barrister and QC) and two sisters, Tania Rachel (born 1965) and Clare Louise (born 1971). His father was born at Blairmore House, a country house near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and died near Toulon in France on 8 September 2010. Blairmore was built by his great-great-grandfather, Alexander Geddes, who had made a fortune in the grain trade in Chicago, and returned to Scotland in the 1880s.

Through his paternal grandmother, Enid Agnes Maud Levita, Cameron is a direct descendant of King William IV by his mistress Dorothea Jordan. This illegitimate line consists of five generations of women starting with Elizabeth Hay, Countess of Erroll née FitzClarence, William and Jordan's sixth child, through to Cameron's grandmother (thereby making Cameron a 5th cousin of Queen Elizabeth II). Cameron's paternal forebears also have a long history in finance. His father Ian was senior partner of the stockbrokers Panmure Gordon, in which firm partnerships had long been held by Cameron's ancestors, including David's grandfather and great-grandfather, and was a Director of estate agent John D Wood. David Cameron's great-great grandfather Emile Levita, a German-Jewish financier (and descendant of Renaissance scholar Elia Levita) who obtained British citizenship in 1871, was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969. His wife, Cameron's great-great grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family on her father's side. One of Emile's sons, Arthur Francis Levita (died 1910, brother of Sir Cecil Levita), of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers, together with great-great-grandfather Sir Ewen Cameron, London head of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, played key roles in arranging loans supplied by the Rothschilds to the Japanese Central Banker (later Prime Minister) Takahashi Korekiyo for the financing of the Japanese Government in the Russo-Japanese war.

Cameron's maternal grandfather was Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet, an Army officer and the High Sheriff of Berkshire, and Cameron's maternal great-grandfather was Sir William Mount, 1st Baronet, CBE, Conservative MP for Newbury 1918–1922. Cameron's great-great grandmother was Lady Ida Matilda Alice Feilding. His great-great-great grandfather was William Feilding, 7th Earl of Denbigh, GCH, PC, a courtier and Gentleman of the Bedchamber. His mother's cousin, Sir Ferdinand Mount, was head of 10 Downing Street's Policy Unit in the early 1980s. Cameron is the nephew of Sir William Dugdale, brother-in-law of Katherine, Lady Dugdale (died 2004) Lady-in-Waiting to HM The Queen since 1955, and former Chairman of Aston Villa Football Club. Birmingham born documentary film-maker Joshua Dugdale is his cousin.

Education

From the age of seven, Cameron was educated at two independent schools: at Heatherdown Preparatory School at Winkfield, in Berkshire, which counts Prince Andrew and Prince Edward among its alumni. Due to good academic grade, Cameron entered its top academic class almost two years early. At the age of thirteen, he went on to Eton College in Berkshire, following his father and elder brother. Eton is often described as the most famous independent school in the world, and "the chief nurse of England's statesmen". His early interest was in art. Cameron was in trouble as a teenager, six weeks before taking his O-levels, when he was named as having smoked cannabis. He admitted the offence and had not been involved in selling drugs, so he was not expelled, but was fined, prevented from leaving school grounds, and given a "Georgic" (a punishment which involved copying 500 lines of Latin text).

Cameron recovered from this episode and passed 12 O-levels, and then studied three A-Levels in History of Art, History and Economics with Politics. He obtained three 'A' grades and a '1' grade in the Scholarship Level exam in Economics and Politics. He then stayed on to sit the entrance exam for Oxford University, which was sat the following autumn. He passed, did well at interview, and was offered a place as a scholar of Brasenose College, his first choice.

After finally leaving Eton just before Christmas 1984, Cameron had nine months of a gap year before going up to Oxford. In January he began work as a researcher for Tim Rathbone, Conservative MP for Lewes and his godfather, in his Parliamentary office. He was there only for three months, but used the time to attend debates in the House of Commons. Through his father, he was then employed for a further three months in Hong Kong by Jardine Matheson as a 'ship jumper', an administrative post for which no experience was needed but which gave him some experience of work.

Returning from Hong Kong he visited Moscow and a Yalta beach in the then Soviet Union, and was approached by two Russian men speaking fluent English. Cameron was later told by one of his professors that it was 'definitely an attempt' by the KGB to recruit him.

Cameron then studied at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, where he read for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). His tutor at Oxford, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, described him as "one of the ablest" students he has taught, with "moderate and sensible Conservative" political views. When commenting in 2006 on his former pupil's ideas about a "Bill of Rights" to replace the Human Rights Act, however, Professor Bogdanor, himself a Liberal Democrat, said, "I think he is very confused. I've read his speech and it's filled with contradictions. There are one or two good things in it but one glimpses them, as it were, through a mist of misunderstanding".

While at Oxford, Cameron was Captain of Brasenose College's tennis team. He was also a member of the élite student dining society the Bullingdon Club, which has developed a reputation for an outlandish drinking culture associated with boisterous behaviour and damaging property. A photograph showing Cameron in a tailcoat with other members of the club, including Boris Johnson, surfaced in 2007, but was later withdrawn by the copyright holder. Cameron's period in the Bullingdon Club is examined in the Channel 4 docu-drama ''When Boris Met Dave'' broadcast on 7 October 2009. He also belonged to the Octagon Club, another dining society. Cameron graduated in 1988 with a first class honours degree. Cameron is still in touch with many of his former Oxford friends, including Boris Johnson and close family friend, the Reverend James Hand.

Early political career

Conservative Research Department

After graduation, Cameron worked for the Conservative Research Department between September 1988 and 1993. A feature on Cameron in ''The Mail on Sunday'' on 18 March 2007 reported that on the day he was due to attend a job interview at Conservative Central Office, a phone call was received from Buckingham Palace. The male caller stated, "I understand you are to see David Cameron. I've tried everything I can to dissuade him from wasting his time on politics but I have failed. I am ringing to tell you that you are about to meet a truly remarkable young man."

In 1991, Cameron was seconded to Downing Street to work on briefing John Major for his then bi-weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions. One newspaper gave Cameron the credit for "sharper ... despatch box performances" by Major, which included highlighting for Major "a dreadful piece of doublespeak" by Tony Blair (then the Labour Employment spokesman) over the effect of a national minimum wage. He became head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department, and in August 1991 was tipped to follow Judith Chaplin as Political Secretary to the Prime Minister.

Cameron lost out, however, to Jonathan Hill, who was appointed in March 1992. He was given the responsibility for briefing Major for his press conferences during the 1992 general election. During the campaign, Cameron was one of the young "brat pack" of party strategists who worked between 12 and 20 hours a day, sleeping in the house of Alan Duncan in Gayfere Street, Westminster, which had been Major's campaign headquarters during his bid for the Conservative leadership. Cameron headed the economic section; it was while working on this campaign that Cameron first worked closely with Steve Hilton, who was later to become Director of Strategy during his party leadership. The strain of getting up at 4:45 am every day was reported to have led Cameron to decide to leave politics in favour of journalism.

Special Adviser

The Conservatives' unexpected success in the 1992 election led Cameron to hit back at older party members who had criticised him and his colleagues. He was quoted as saying, the day after the election, "whatever people say about us, we got the campaign right," and that they had listened to their campaign workers on the ground rather than the newspapers. He revealed he had led other members of the team across Smith Square to jeer at Transport House, the former Labour headquarters. Cameron was rewarded with a promotion to Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont.

Cameron was working for Lamont at the time of Black Wednesday, when pressure from currency speculators forced the Pound sterling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Cameron, who was unknown to the public at the time, can be spotted at Lamont's side in news film of the latter's announcement of British withdrawal from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism that evening. At the 1992 Conservative Party conference in October, Cameron had a tough time trying to arrange to brief the speakers in the economic debate, having to resort to putting messages on the internal television system imploring the mover of the motion, Patricia Morris, to contact him. Later that month Cameron joined a delegation of Special Advisers who visited Germany to build better relations with the Christian Democratic Union; he was reported to be "still smarting" over the Bundesbank's contribution to the economic crisis.

Cameron's boss Norman Lamont fell out with John Major after Black Wednesday and became highly unpopular with the public. Taxes needed to be raised in the 1993 Budget, and Cameron fed the options Lamont was considering through to Conservative Central Office for their political acceptability to be assessed. However, Lamont's unpopularity did not necessarily affect Cameron: he was considered as a potential "kamikaze" candidate for the Newbury By-election, which includes the area where he grew up. However, Cameron decided not to stand.

During the By-election, Lamont gave the response "Je ne regrette rien" to a question about whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or admitted "singing in his bath" with happiness at leaving the ERM. Cameron was identified by one journalist as having inspired this gaffe; it was speculated that the heavy Conservative defeat in Newbury may have cost Cameron his chance of becoming Chancellor himself (even though as he was not a Member of Parliament he could not have been). Lamont was sacked at the end of May 1993, and decided not to write the usual letter of resignation; Cameron was given the responsibility to issue to the press a statement of self-justification.

Home Office

After Lamont was sacked, Cameron remained at the Treasury for less than a month before being specifically recruited by Home Secretary Michael Howard; it was commented that he was still "very much in favour". It was later reported that many at the Treasury would have preferred Cameron to carry on. At the beginning of September 1993, Cameron applied to go on Conservative Central Office's list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates.

According to Derek Lewis, then Director-General of Her Majesty's Prison Service, Cameron showed him a "his and hers list" of proposals made by Howard and his wife, Sandra. Lewis said that Sandra Howard's list included reducing the quality of prison food, although Sandra Howard denied this claim. Lewis reported that Cameron was "uncomfortable" about the list. In defending Sandra Howard and insisting that she made no such proposal, the journalist Bruce Anderson wrote that Cameron had proposed a much shorter definition on prison catering which revolved around the phrase "balanced diet", and that Lewis had written thanking Cameron for a valuable contribution.

During his work for Howard, Cameron often briefed the press. In March 1994, someone leaked to the Press that the Labour Party had called for a meeting with John Major to discuss a consensus on the Prevention of Terrorism Act. After a leak enquiry failed to find the culprit, Labour MP Peter Mandelson demanded an assurance from Howard that Cameron had not been responsible, which Howard gave. A senior Home Office Civil Servant noted the influence of Howard's Special Advisers saying previous incumbents "would listen to the evidence before making a decision. Howard just talks to young public school gentlemen from the party headquarters."

Carlton

In July 1994, Cameron left his role as Special Adviser to work as the Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications. Carlton, which had won the ITV franchise for London weekdays in 1991, was a growing media company which also had film distribution and video producing arms. In 1997 Cameron played up the Company's prospects for digital terrestrial television, for which it joined with Granada television and BSkyB to form British Digital Broadcasting. In a roundtable discussion on the future of broadcasting in 1998 he criticised the effect of overlapping different regulators on the industry.

Carlton's consortium did win the digital terrestrial franchise but the resulting company suffered difficulties in attracting subscribers. In 1999 the ''Express on Sunday'' newspaper claimed Cameron had rubbished one of its stories which had given an accurate number of subscribers, because he wanted the number to appear higher than expected. Cameron resigned as Director of Corporate Affairs in February 2001 in order to fight for election to Parliament, although he remained on the payroll as a consultant.

Parliamentary Candidacy

Having been approved for the Candidates' list, Cameron began looking for a seat. He was reported to have missed out on selection for Ashford in December 1994 after failing to get to the selection meeting as a result of train delays. Early in 1996, he was selected for Stafford, a new constituency created by boundary changes, which was projected to have a Conservative majority. At the 1996 Conservative Party Conference he called for tax cuts in the forthcoming Budget to be targeted at the low paid and to "small businesses where people took money out of their own pockets to put into companies to keep them going". He also said the Party, "Should be proud of the Tory tax record but that people needed reminding of its achievements ... It's time to return to our tax cutting agenda. The socialist Prime Ministers of Europe have endorsed Tony Blair because they want a federal pussy cat and not a British lion."

When writing his election address, Cameron made his own opposition to British membership of the single European currency clear, pledging not to support it. This was a break with official Conservative policy but about 200 other candidates were making similar declarations. Otherwise, Cameron kept very closely to the national party line. He also campaigned using the claim that a Labour Government would increase the cost of a pint of beer by 24p; however the Labour candidate David Kidney portrayed Cameron as "a right-wing Tory". Stafford had a swing almost the same as the national swing, which made it one of the many seats to fall to Labour: David Kidney had a majority of 4,314.

In the round of selection contests taking place in the run-up to the 2001 general election, Cameron again attempted to be selected for a winnable seat. He tried out for the Kensington and Chelsea seat after the death of Alan Clark, but did not make the shortlist.

He was in the final two but narrowly lost at Wealden in March 2000, a loss ascribed by Samantha Cameron to his lack of spontaneity when speaking.

On 4 April 2000 Cameron was selected as prospective candidate (PPC) for Witney in Oxfordshire. This had been a safe Conservative seat but its sitting MP Shaun Woodward (who had worked with Cameron on the 1992 election campaign) had "crossed the floor" to join the Labour Party; newspapers claimed Cameron and Woodward had "loathed each other", although Cameron's biographers Francis Elliott and James Hanning describe them as being "on fairly friendly terms". Cameron put a great deal of effort into "nursing" his potential constituency, turning up at social functions, and attacked Woodward for changing his mind on fox hunting to support a ban.

During the election campaign, Cameron accepted the offer of writing a regular column for ''The Guardian'''s online section. He won the seat with a 1.9% swing to the Conservatives and a majority of 7,973.

Member of Parliament

Upon his election to Parliament, he served as a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, a plum appointment for a newly elected Member. It was Cameron's proposal that the Committee launch an inquiry into the law on drugs, and during the inquiry he urged the consideration of "radical options". The report recommended a downgrading of Ecstasy from Class A to Class B, as well as moves towards a policy of 'harm reduction', which Cameron defended.

Cameron determinedly attempted to increase his public profile, offering quotations on matters of public controversy. He opposed the payment of compensation to Gurbux Singh, who had resigned as head of the Commission for Racial Equality after a confrontation with the police; and commented that the Home Affairs Select Committee had taken a long time to discuss whether the phrase "black market" should be used. However, he was passed over for a front bench promotion in July 2002; Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith did invite Cameron and his ally George Osborne to coach him on Prime Minister's Questions in November 2002. The next week, Cameron deliberately abstained in a vote on allowing same-sex and unmarried couples to adopt children jointly, against a whip to oppose; his abstention was noted. The wide scale of abstentions and rebellious votes destabilised the Iain Duncan Smith leadership.

In June 2003, Cameron was appointed as a shadow minister in the Privy Council Office as a deputy to Eric Forth, who was then Shadow Leader of the House. He also became a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party when Michael Howard took over the leadership in November of that year. He was appointed as the Opposition frontbench local government spokesman in 2004, before being promoted into the shadow cabinet that June as head of policy co-ordination. Later, he became Shadow Education Secretary in the post-election reshuffle.

From February 2002 until August 2005 he was a non-executive director of Urbium PLC, operator of the ''Tiger Tiger'' bar chain.

Leadership of the Conservative Party

Leadership election

Following the Labour victory in the May 2005 general election, Michael Howard announced his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party and set a lengthy timetable for the leadership election. Cameron announced formally that he would be a candidate for the position on 29 September 2005. Parliamentary colleagues supporting him initially included Boris Johnson, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, then Shadow Defence Secretary and deputy leader of the party Michael Ancram, Oliver Letwin and former party leader William Hague. Despite this, his campaign did not gain significant support prior to the 2005 Conservative Party Conference. However his speech, delivered without notes, proved a significant turning point. In the speech he vowed to make people, "feel good about being Conservatives again" and said he wanted, "to switch on a whole new generation."

In the first ballot of Conservative MPs on 18 October 2005, Cameron came second, with 56 votes, slightly more than expected; David Davis had fewer than predicted at 62 votes; Liam Fox came third with 42 votes and Kenneth Clarke was eliminated with 38 votes. In the second ballot on 20 October 2005, Cameron came first with 90 votes; David Davis was second, with 57, and Liam Fox was eliminated with 51 votes. All 198 Conservative MPs voted in both ballots.

The next stage of the election process, between Davis and Cameron, was a vote open to the entire Conservative party membership. Cameron was elected with more than twice as many votes as Davis and more than half of all ballots issued; Cameron won 134,446 votes on a 78% turnout, beating Davis's 64,398 votes. Although Davis had initially been the favourite, it was widely acknowledged that Davis's candidacy was marred by a disappointing conference speech, whilst Cameron's was well received. Cameron's election as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition was announced on 6 December 2005. As is customary for an Opposition leader not already a member, upon election Cameron became a member of the Privy Council, being formally approved to join on 14 December 2005, and sworn of the Council on 8 March 2006.

Cameron's appearance on the cover of ''Time'' in September 2008 was said by the ''Daily Mail'' to present him to the world as 'Prime Minister in waiting'.

Reaction to Cameron as Leader

Cameron's relatively young age and inexperience before becoming leader have invited satirical comparison with Tony Blair. ''Private Eye'' soon published a picture of both leaders on their front cover, with the caption "World's first face transplant a success". On the left, ''New Statesman'' has unfavourably likened his "new style of politics" to Tony Blair's early leadership years. Cameron is accused of paying excessive attention to image, with ITV News broadcasting footage from the 2006 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth which showed him wearing four different sets of clothes within the space of a few hours. Cameron was characterised in a Labour Party political broadcast as "Dave the Chameleon", who would change what he said to match the expectations of his audience. Cameron later claimed that the broadcast had become his daughter's "favourite video". He has also been described by comedy writer and broadcaster Charlie Brooker as being "like a hollow Easter egg with no bag of sweets inside" in his Guardian column.

On the right, Norman Tebbit, former Chairman of the Conservative Party, has likened Cameron to Pol Pot, "intent on purging even the memory of Thatcherism before building a New Modern Compassionate Green Globally Aware Party". Quentin Davies MP, who defected from the Conservatives to Labour on 26 June 2007, branded him "superficial, unreliable and [with] an apparent lack of any clear convictions" and stated that David Cameron had turned the Conservative Party's mission into a "PR agenda". Traditionalist conservative columnist and author Peter Hitchens has written that, "Mr Cameron has abandoned the last significant difference between his party and the established left", by embracing social liberalism and has dubbed the party under his leadership "Blue Labour", a pun on New Labour. Cameron responded by calling Hitchens a "maniac".

Daily Telegraph correspondent and blogger Gerald Warner has been particularly scathing about Cameron's leadership, arguing that it is alienating traditionalist conservative elements from the Conservative Party.

Cameron is reported to be known to friends and family as "Dave" rather than David, although he invariably uses "David'" in public. However, critics of Cameron often refer to him as "Call me Dave" in an attempt to imply populism in the same way as "Call me Tony" was used in 1997. The ''Times'' columnist Daniel Finkelstein has condemned those who attempt to belittle Cameron by calling him 'Dave'.

Shadow Cabinet appointments

His Shadow Cabinet appointments have included MPs associated with the various wings of the party. Former leader William Hague was appointed to the Foreign Affairs brief, while both George Osborne and David Davis were retained, as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Shadow Home Secretary respectively. Hague, assisted by Davis, stood in for Cameron during his paternity leave in February 2006. In June 2008 Davis announced his intention to resign as an MP, and was immediately replaced as Shadow Home Secretary by Dominic Grieve, the surprise move seen as a challenge to the changes introduced under Cameron's leadership. In January 2009 a reshuffle of the Shadow Cabinet was undertaken. The chief change was the appointment of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke as Shadow Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Secretary, David Cameron stating that "With Ken Clarke's arrival, we now have the best economic team." The reshuffle saw eight other changes made.

European Conservatives and Reformists

During his successful campaign to be elected Leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron pledged that under his leadership the Conservative Party's Members of the European Parliament would leave the European People's Party group, which had a "federalist" approach to the European Union. Once elected Cameron began discussions with right-wing and eurosceptic parties in other European countries, mainly in eastern Europe, and in July 2006 he concluded an agreement to form the Movement for European Reform with the Czech Civic Democratic Party, leading to the formation of a new European Parliament group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, in 2009 after the European Parliament elections. Cameron attended a gathering at Warsaw's Palladium cinema celebrating the foundation of the alliance.

In forming the caucus, containing a total of 54 MEPs drawn from eight of the 27 EU member states, Cameron reportedly broke with two decades of Conservative cooperation with the centre-right Christian Democrats, the European People's Party (EPP), on the grounds that they are dominated by European federalists and supporters of the Lisbon treaty. EPP leader Wilfried Martens, former prime minister of Belgium, has stated "Cameron's campaign has been to take his party back to the centre in every policy area with one major exception: Europe. ... I can't understand his tactics. Merkel and Sarkozy will never accept his Euroscepticism." The left-wing ''New Statesman'' magazine reported that the US administration had "concerns about Cameron among top members of the team" and quoted David Rothkopf in saying that the issue "makes Cameron an even more dubious choice to be Britain's next prime minister than he was before and, should he attain that post, someone about whom the Obama administration ought to be very cautious."

Shortlists for Parliamentary Candidates

Similarly, Cameron's initial "A-List" of prospective parliamentary candidates has been attacked by members of his party, with the policy now having been discontinued in favour of gender balanced final shortlists. These have been criticised by senior Conservative MP and Prisons Spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe as an "insult to women", Widdecombe accusing Cameron of "storing up huge problems for the future." The plans have since led to conflict in a number of constituencies, including the widely reported resignation of Joanne Cash, a close friend of Cameron, as candidate in the constituency of Westminster North following a dispute described as "a battle for the soul of the Tory Party".

2010 general election

At the 2010 general election on 6 May, Cameron led the Conservatives to their best performance since the 1992 election (the last time the Conservatives had won), with the largest number of seats (306) but still 20 seats short of an overall majority, resulting in the nation's first hung parliament since February 1974. Talks between Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg led to an agreed Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition.

Prime Minister

On 11 May 2010, following the resignation of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and on his recommendation, Queen Elizabeth II invited Cameron to form a government. At age 43, Cameron became the youngest British Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool, who was appointed in 1812. In his first address outside 10 Downing Street, he announced his intention to form a coalition government, the first since the Second World War, with the Liberal Democrats.

Cameron outlined how he intended to "put aside party differences and work hard for the common good and for the national interest." As one of his first moves Cameron appointed Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, as Deputy Prime Minister on 11 May 2010. Between them, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats control 363 seats in the House of Commons, with a majority of 76 seats. On 2 June 2010, when Cameron took his first session of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) as Prime Minister, he began by offering his support and condolences to those affected by the shootings in Cumbria.

On 5 February 2011, Cameron criticised the failure of 'state multiculturalism', in his first speech as PM on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism.

Policies and views

Self-description of views

Cameron describes himself as a "modern compassionate conservative" and has spoken of a need for a new style of politics, saying that he was "fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster". He has stated that he is "certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite." He has also claimed to be a "liberal Conservative", and "not a deeply ideological person." As Leader of the Opposition, Cameron stated that he did not intend to oppose the government as a matter of course, and would offer his support in areas of agreement. He has urged politicians to concentrate more on improving people's happiness and "general well-being", instead of focusing solely on "financial wealth". There have been claims that he described himself to journalists at a dinner during the leadership contest as the "heir to Blair". He believes that British Muslims have a duty to integrate into British culture, but notes that they find aspects such as high divorce rates and drug use uninspiring, and notes that "Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other way around."

Daniel Finkelstein has said of the period leading up to Cameron's election as leader of the Conservative party that "a small group of us (myself, David Cameron, George Osborne, Michael Gove, Nick Boles, Nick Herbert I think, once or twice) used to meet up in the offices of Policy Exchange, eat pizza, and consider the future of the Conservative Party".

Cameron co-operated with Dylan Jones, giving him interviews and access, to enable him to produce the book ''Cameron on Cameron''.

Divisive Parliamentary votes

In November 2001, Cameron voted to modify legislation allowing people detained at a police station to be fingerprinted and searched for an identifying birthmark to be applicable only in connection with a terrorism investigation. In March 2002, he voted against banning the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, being an occasional hunter himself. In April 2003, he voted against the introduction of a bill to ban smoking in restaurants. In June 2003, he voted against NHS Foundation Trusts. Also in 2003, he voted to keep the controversial Section 28 clause.

In March 2003, he voted against a motion that the case had not yet been made for the Iraq War, and then supported using "all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction". In October 2003, however, he voted in favour of setting up a judicial inquiry into the Iraq War. In October 2004, he voted in favour of the Civil Partnership Bill. In February 2005, he voted in favour of changing the text in the Prevention of Terrorism Bill from "The Secretary of State may make a control order against an individual" to "The Secretary of State may ''apply to the court'' for a control order ..." In October 2005, he voted against the Identity Cards Bill.

Criticism of other parties and politicians

Cameron criticised Gordon Brown (when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer) for being "an analogue politician in a digital age" and referred to him as "the roadblock to reform". He has also said that John Prescott "clearly looks a fool" in light of allegations of ministerial misconduct. During a speech to the Ethnic Media Conference on 29 November 2006, Cameron also described Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, as an "ageing far left politician" in reference to Livingstone's views on multiculturalism.

Since becoming prime minister, he has reacted to press reports that Brown could be the next head of the International Monetary Fund by hinting that he may block Brown from being appointed to the role, citing the huge national debt that Brown left the country with as a reason for Brown not being suitable for the role.

Cameron has accused the United Kingdom Independence Party of being "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly," leading UKIP leader Nigel Farage to demand an apology for the remarks. Right-wing Conservative MP Bob Spink, who later defected to UKIP, also criticised the remarks, as did the ''Daily Telegraph''.

Cameron was seen encouraging Conservative MPs to join the standing ovation given to Tony Blair at the end of his last Prime Minister's Question Time; he had paid tribute to the "huge efforts" Blair had made and said Blair had "considerable achievements to his credit, whether it is peace in Northern Ireland or his work in the developing world, which will endure".

In 2006, Cameron made a speech in which he described extremist Islamic organisations and the British National Party as "mirror images" to each other, both preaching "creeds of pure hatred". Cameron is listed as being a supporter of Unite Against Fascism.

Cameron, in late 2009, urged the Lib Dems to join the Conservatives in a new "national movement" arguing there was "barely a cigarette paper" between them on a large number of issues. The invitation was rejected by the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who attacked Cameron at the start of his party's annual conference in Bournemouth, saying that the Conservatives were totally different from his party and that the Lib Dems were the true "progressives" in UK politics.

Political commentary

Allegations of social elitism

While Leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron has been accused of reliance on "old-boy networks" and attacked by his party for the imposition of selective shortlists of prospective parliamentary candidates.

''The Guardian'' has accused Cameron of relying on "the most prestigious of old-boy networks in his attempt to return the Tories to power", pointing out that three members of his shadow cabinet and 15 members of his front bench team were "Old Etonians". Similarly, ''The Sunday Times'' has commented that "David Cameron has more Etonians around him than any leader since Macmillan" and asked whether he can "represent Britain from such a narrow base." Former Labour cabinet minister Hazel Blears has said of Cameron, "You have to wonder about a man who surrounds himself with so many people who went to the same school. I'm pretty sure I don't want 21st-century Britain run by people who went to just one school."

Some supporters of the party have accused Cameron's government for cronyism on the front benches, with Sir Tom Cowie, working-class founder of Arriva and former Conservative donor, ceasing his donations in August 2007 due to disillusionment with Cameron's leadership, saying, "the Tory party seems to be run now by Old Etonians and they don't seem to understand how other people live." In reply, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said when a party was changing, "there will always be people who are uncomfortable with that process". In a response to Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions in December 2009, Gordon Brown addressed the Conservative Party's inheritance tax policy, saying it "seems to have been dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton". This led to open discussion of "class war" by the mainstream media and leading politicians of both major parties, with speculation that the 2010 general election campaign would see the Labour Party highlight the backgrounds of senior Conservative politicians.

Raising teaching standards

At the launch of the Conservative Party's education manifesto in January 2010, Cameron declared an admiration for the "brazenly elitist" approach to education of countries such as Singapore and South Korea and expressed a desire to "elevate the status of teaching in our country". He suggested the adoption of more stringent criteria for entry to teaching and offered repayment of the loans of maths and science graduates obtaining first or 2.1 degrees from "good" universities. Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, said "The message that the Conservatives are sending to the majority of students is that if you didn't go to a university attended by members of the Shadow Cabinet, they don't believe you're worth as much." In response to the manifesto as a whole, Chris Keates, head of teaching union NASUWT, said teachers would be left "shocked, dismayed and demoralised" and warned of the potential for strikes as a result.

South Africa

In April 2009, ''The Independent'' reported that in 1989, while Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned under the apartheid regime, David Cameron had accepted a trip to South Africa paid for by an anti-sanctions lobby firm. A spokesperson for Cameron responded by saying that the Conservative Party was at that time opposed to sanctions against South Africa and that his trip was a fact-finding mission. However, the newspaper reported that Cameron's then superior at Conservative Research Department called the trip "jolly", saying that "it was all terribly relaxed, just a little treat, a perk of the job. The Botha regime was attempting to make itself look less horrible, but I don't regard it as having been of the faintest political consequence." Cameron distanced himself from his party's history of opposing sanctions against the regime. He was criticised by Labour MP Peter Hain, himself an anti-apartheid campaigner.

Turkey and Israel

In a speech in Ankara in July 2010, Cameron stated unequivocally his support for Turkey's accession to the EU, citing economic, security and political considerations, and claimed that those who opposed Turkish membership were driven by "protectionism, narrow nationalism or prejudice". In that speech, he was also critical of Israeli action during the Gaza flotilla raid and its Gaza policy, and repeated his opinion that Israel had turned Gaza into a "prison camp", having previously referred to Gaza as "a giant open prison". These views were met with mixed reactions.

At the end of May 2011, Cameron stepped down as patron of the Jewish National Fund the first British prime minister not to be patron of the charity in the 110 years of its existence.

Allegations of recreational drug use

During the leadership election, allegations were made that Cameron had used cannabis and cocaine recreationally before becoming an MP. Pressed on this point during the BBC programme ''Question Time'', Cameron expressed the view that everybody was allowed to "err and stray" in their past. His refusal to deny consumption of either cannabis or cocaine prior to his parliamentary career has been interpreted as a tacit admission that he has in fact consumed both of these illegal drugs. During his 2005 Conservative leadership campaign he addressed the question of drug consumption by remarking that "I did lots of things before I came into politics which I shouldn't have done. We all did."

Cameron and Andy Coulson

In 2007 Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World as his director of communications. Coulson had resigned as the paper's editor following the conviction of a reporter in relation to illegal phone hacking, although stating that he knew nothing about it. In June 2010 Downing Street confirmed Coulson's annual salary as £140,000, the highest pay of any special adviser to UK Government. In January 2011 Coulson left his post, saying coverage of the phone hacking scandal was making it difficult to give his best to the job. In July 2011 he was arrested and questioned by police in connection with further allegations of illegal activities at the News of the World, and released on bail. Despite a call to apologise for hiring Coulson by the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband, Cameron defended the appointment, saying that he had taken a conscious choice to give someone who had screwed up a second chance. On 20 July, in a special parliamentary session at the House of Commons, arranged to discuss the News of the World phone hacking scandal, Cameron said that he "regretted the furore" that had resulted from his appointment of Coulson, and that "with hindsight" he would not have hired him.

Standing in opinion polls

In the first month of Cameron's leadership, the Conservative Party's standing in opinion polls rose, with several pollsters placing it ahead of the ruling Labour Party. While the Conservative and Labour Parties drew even in early spring 2006, following the May 2006 local elections various polls once again generally showed Conservative leads.

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister on 27 June 2007, Labour moved ahead and its ratings grew steadily at Cameron's expense, an ICM poll in July showing Labour with a seven point lead in the wake of controversies over his policies. An ICM poll in September saw Cameron rated the least popular of the three main party leaders. A YouGov poll for Channel 4 one week later, after the Labour Party Conference, extended the Labour lead to 11 points, prompting further speculation of an early election.

Following the Conservative Party Conference in the first week of October 2007, the Conservatives drew level with Labour When Brown declared he would not call an election for the autumn, a decline in his and Labour's standings followed. At the end of the year a series of polls showed improved support for the Conservatives giving them an 11 point lead over Labour. This decreased slightly in early 2008, and in March the Conservatives had their largest lead in opinion polls since October 1987, at 16 points. In May 2008, following the worst local election performance from the Labour Party in 40 years, the Conservative lead was up to 26 points, the largest since 1968.

In December 2008, a ComRes poll showed the Conservative lead had decreased dramatically though by February 2009 it had recovered to reach 12 points. A period of relative stability in the polls was broken in mid-December 2009 and by January 2010 some polls were predicting a hung parliament

A YouGov poll on party leaders conducted on 9–10 June 2011 found 44% of the electorate thought he was doing well and 50% thought he was doing badly, whilst 38% thought he would be the best PM, 23% preferred Ed Milliband and 35% didn't know.

Personal life

Cameron married Samantha Gwendoline Sheffield, the daughter of Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet and Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones (now The Viscountess Astor), on 1 June 1996 at the Church of St Augustine of Canterbury, East Hendred, Oxfordshire. The Camerons have had four children. Their first child, Ivan Reginald Ian, was born on 8 April 2002 in Hammersmith and Fulham, London, with a rare combination of cerebral palsy and a form of severe epilepsy called Ohtahara syndrome, requiring round-the-clock care. Recalling the receipt of this news, Cameron is quoted as saying: "The news hits you like a freight train... You are depressed for a while because you are grieving for the difference between your hopes and the reality. But then you get over that, because he's wonderful." Ivan died at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, on 25 February 2009, aged six.

David and Samantha Cameron have two daughters, Nancy Gwen (born 2004), and Florence Rose Endellion (born 24 August 2010), and a son, Arthur Elwen (born 2006). Cameron took paternity leave when his second son was born, and this decision received broad coverage. It was also stated that Cameron would be taking paternity leave after his second daughter was born. His second daughter, Florence Rose Endellion, was born on 24 August 2010, three weeks prematurely, while the family was on holiday in Cornwall. Her third given name, Endellion, is taken from the village of St Endellion near where the Camerons were holidaying.

A ''Daily Mail'' article from June 2007 quoted ''Sunday Times Rich List'' compiler Philip Beresford, who had valued the Conservative Leader for the first time, as saying: "I put the combined family wealth of David and Samantha Cameron at £30 million plus. Both sides of the family are extremely wealthy." Another estimate is , though this figure excludes the million-pound legacies Cameron is expected to inherit from both sides of his family.

In early May 2008, David Cameron decided to enroll his daughter Nancy at a State school. The Camerons had been attending its associated church, which is nearby the Cameron family home in North Kensington, for three years.

On 8 September 2010 it was announced that Cameron would miss Prime Minister's Questions in order to fly to southern France to see his father, Ian Cameron, who had suffered a stroke with coronary complications. Later that day, with David and other family members at his bedside, Ian died. On 17 September 2010, Cameron attended a private ceremony for the funeral of his father in Berkshire, which prevented him from hearing the address of The Pope to Westminster Hall, an occasion he would otherwise have attended.

Cameron supports Aston Villa Football Club. He also owns a cat, Larry, who lives at 10 Downing Street.

Cycling

He regularly uses his bicycle to commute to work. In early 2006 he was photographed cycling to work followed by his driver in a car carrying his belongings. His Conservative Party spokesperson subsequently said that this was a regular arrangement for Cameron at the time.

Cameron's bicycle was stolen in May 2009 while he was shopping. It was recovered with the aid of ''The Sunday Mirror''. His bicycle has since been stolen again from near his house. He is an occasional jogger and has raised funds for charities by taking part in the Oxford 5K and the Great Brook Run.

Faith

Speaking of his religious beliefs, Cameron has said: "I've a sort of fairly classic Church of England faith". He states that his politics "is not faith-driven", adding: "I am a Christian, I go to church, I believe in God, but I do not have a direct line." On religious faith in general he has said: "I do think that organised religion can get things wrong but the Church of England and the other churches do play a very important role in society."

Questioned as to whether his faith had ever been tested, Cameron spoke of the birth of his severely disabled eldest son, saying: "You ask yourself, 'If there is a God, why can anything like this happen?'" He went on to state that in some ways the experience had "strengthened" his beliefs.

Styles

David Cameron Esq (1966–2001)

David Cameron Esq MP (2001–2005)

The Rt Hon David Cameron MP (2005—)

Ancestry

Among Cameron's ancestors is King William IV, who is his 5-times great-grandfather through an illegitimate daughter who was the mother of Agnes Duff, Countess Fife, who is shown in the ancestry chart below. {{ahnentafel-compact6 |style=font-size: 90%; line-height: 110%; |border=1 |boxstyle=padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; |boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; |boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; |boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; |boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; |boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; |boxstyle_6=background-color: #fcc; |1= 1. David William Donald Cameron |2= 2. Ian Donald Cameron |3= 3. Mary Fleur Mount |4= 4. Ewen Donald Cameron |5= 5. Enid Agnes Maud Levita |6= 6. Sir William Malcolm Mount, 2nd Baronet |7= 7. Elizabeth Nance Llewellyn |8= 8. Ewen Allan Cameron |9= 9. Rachel Margaret Geddes |10= 10. Sir Arthur Francis Levita |11= 11. Stephanie Agnes Cooper |12= 12. Sir William Arthur Mount, 1st Baronet |13= 13. Hilda Lucy Adelaide Low |14= 14. Owen John Llewellyn, of Moulsford |15= 15. Anna Elizabeth Mann |16= 16. Sir Ewen Cameron |17= 17. Josephine Elizabeth Houchen |18= 18. Alexander Geddes |19= 19. Frances R. Sharp |20= 20. Sir Emile George Charles Levita |21= 21. Katherine Plumridge Rée |22= 22. Sir Alfred Cooper |23= 23. Lady Agnes Cecil Emmeline Duff |24= 24. Sir William George Mount, of Wasing Place |25= 25. Marianne Emily Clutterbuck |26= 26. (William) Malcolm Low, Esq. |27= 27. Lady Ida Matilda Alice Feilding |28= 28. Evan Henry Llewellyn |29= 29. Mary Blanche Somers |30= 30. General Sir William John Mann |31= 31. Julia Brown |32= 32. Sir William Cameron |33= 33. Catherine Cameron |34= 34. John Houchen |35= 35. Susannah Vautier |36= 36. John Geddes |37= 37. Jean McConnachie |38= 38. Hugh Sharp |39= 39. Rachel Stewart |40= 40. Emile George Charles Levita |41= 41. Katherine Plumridge Rée |42= 42. Hermann Philip Rée |43= 43. Catherine German |44= 44. William Cooper |45= 45. Anna Marsh |46= 46. James Duff, 5th Earl Fife |47= 47. Agnes Duff, Countess Fife |48= 48. Sir William Mount |49= 49. Charlotte Talbot |50= 50. Colonel Robert Clutterbuck |51= 51. Elizabeth Anne Hulton |52= 52. General Sir John Low |53= 53. Augusta Ludlow Shakespear |54= 54. William Basil Percy Feilding, 7th Earl of Denbigh, 6th Earl of Desmond |55= 55. Lady Mary Elizabeth Kitty Moreton |56= 56. Llewellyn Llewellyn |57= 57. Eliza William Strick |58= 58. Sir Thomas Somers |59= 59. Elizabeth Williams |60= 60. |61= 61. |62= 62. |63= 63. }}

See also

United Kingdom coalition government 2010 to present

References

External links

David Cameron ''official website''

David Cameron official Conservative Party profile

Number 10 Official Number 10 website

*David Cameron's columns (2001–2004) as Conservative Party diarist at ''The Guardian''

David Cameron collected news and commentary at ''The Telegraph''

The David Cameron story, Brian Wheeler, ''BBC News'', 6 December 2005

Ancestry of David Cameron from William Addams Reitwiesner

Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Old Etonians Category:People from London Category:People from West Berkshire (district) Category:Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford Category:Conservative Party (UK) MPs Category:Current national leaders Category:English Anglicans Category:Honorary Fellows of Brasenose College, Oxford Category:Leaders of the Conservative Party (UK) Category:Leaders of the Opposition (United Kingdom) Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010–

af:David Cameron ar:ديفيد كاميرون an:David Cameron az:Devid Kemeron zh-min-nan:David Cameron be:Дэвід Кэмеран bcl:David Cameron bi:David Cameron bs:David Cameron br:David Cameron bg:Дейвид Камерън ca:David Cameron cs:David Cameron cy:David Cameron da:David Cameron de:David Cameron et:David Cameron el:Ντέιβιντ Κάμερον es:David Cameron eo:David Cameron eu:David Cameron fa:دیوید کامرون fr:David Cameron ga:David Cameron gv:David Cameron gd:David Cameron gl:David Cameron ko:데이비드 캐머런 hy:Դևիդ Քեմերոն hsb:David Cameron hr:David Cameron io:David Cameron id:David Cameron ie:David Cameron os:Кэмерон, Дэвид is:David Cameron it:David Cameron he:דייוויד קמרון pam:David Cameron ka:დეივიდ კამერონი kw:David Cameron la:David Cameron lv:Deivids Kemerons lb:David Cameron lt:David Cameron hu:David Cameron mr:डेव्हिड कॅमेरॉन arz:ديفيد كاميرون ms:David Cameron nl:David Cameron new:डेविड क्यामरन ja:デーヴィッド・キャメロン no:David Cameron nn:David Cameron oc:David Cameron pnb:ڈیوڈ کیمرون pl:David Cameron pt:David Cameron ro:David Cameron qu:David Cameron ru:Кэмерон, Дэвид sq:David Cameron scn:David Cameron simple:David Cameron sk:David Cameron sr:Дејвид Камерон sh:David Cameron fi:David Cameron sv:David Cameron tl:David Cameron ta:டேவிட் கேமரன் tt:Дэвид Кэмерон th:เดวิด แคเมอรอน tr:David Cameron uk:Девід Камерон vi:David Cameron yi:דייוויד קאמעראן yo:David Cameron zh-yue:甘民樂 zh:戴维·卡梅伦

name	Dirk Nowitzki
height ft	7
height in	0
weight lb	245
position	Power forward
birth date	June 19, 1978
birth place	Würzburg, West Germany
team	Dallas Mavericks
number	41
nationality	German
draft round	1
draft pick	9
draft team	Milwaukee Bucks
draft year	1998
career start	1994
years1	1994–1998
team1	DJK Würzburg (Germany)
years2	–present
team2	Dallas Mavericks
highlights	NBA Champion (2011) NBA Finals MVP (2011) NBA Most Valuable Player () 10× NBA All-Star (–) 4× All-NBA First Team (–, ) 5× All-NBA Second Team (–, , –) 2× All-NBA Third Team (, ) NBA Three-Point Shootout Champion () FIBA World Championship MVP (2002) EuroBasket MVP (2005) 7x European Player of the Year: *5× Euroscar Award Winner (2002–2006) *Mister Europa Player of the Year (2005) *FIBA Europe Player of the Year (2005) Best NBA Player ESPY Award (2011) Best Male Athlete ESPY Award (2011) }}

Dirk Werner Nowitzki () (born June 19, 1978) is a German professional basketball player who plays for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). An alumnus of Röntgen Gymnasium and DJK Würzburg basketball club, Nowitzki was drafted ninth overall by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1998 NBA Draft, and was immediately traded to the Mavericks, where he has played ever since. Standing , Nowitzki plays the power forward position but also has the mobility, size, and shooting ability to play the other frontcourt positions, center and small forward.

Nowitzki has led the Mavericks to 11 consecutive NBA Playoffs (2000–01 to 2010–11), including an NBA Finals appearance in 2006 and the franchise's first championship in 2011, making him one of only 5 players in NBA history to win a championship while being the only NBA All-Star on the team. He is a 10-time All-Star and 11-time member of the All-NBA Teams, and the 1st European-born player in NBA history to receive the NBA Most Valuable Player award. He is the first Maverick ever to be voted into an All-NBA Team and also holds several all-time Mavericks franchise records. Only Nowitzki and three other players have ever averaged more than 25 points and 10 rebounds in the NBA playoffs, and only Nowitzki and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have managed 4 consecutive 30-point, 15-rebound games in the playoffs. Additionally, Nowitzki is the only player in NBA history to get 100 blocks and 150 3-pointers in a single season.

Nowitzki led the German national basketball team to a bronze medal in the 2002 FIBA World Championship and the silver medal in EuroBasket 2005, and was leading scorer and elected Most Valuable Player in both tournaments. Nowitzki has been a seven-time European Player of the Year, being named the Euroscar European Basketball Player of the Year by the Italian sports newspaper ''Gazzetta dello Sport'' for five years in a row, the Mister Europa European Player of the Year by the Italian sports magazine ''Superbasket ''in 2005, and the FIBA Europe Basketball Player of the Year the same year.

Early years

Born in Würzburg, Germany, Dirk Nowitzki comes from a sports family: his mother Helga Nowitzki was a professional basketball player and his father Jörg-Werner was a handball player who represented Germany at the highest international level. His older sister Silke Nowitzki, a local champion in track and field, also became a basketball player and now works for the NBA in International TV. Dirk Nowitzki was a very tall child; most of the time he stood above his peers by a foot or more. He initially played handball and tennis, but soon grew tired of being called a "freak" for his height and eventually turned to basketball. After joining the local DJK Würzburg, the 15-year-old attracted the attention of former German international basketball player Holger Geschwindner, who spotted his talent immediately and offered to coach him individually two to three times per week. After getting both the approval of Nowitzki and his parents, Geschwindner put his pupil through an unorthodox training scheme: he emphasized shooting and passing exercises, and shunned weight training and tactical drills, because he felt it was "unnecessary friction." Furthermore, Geschwindner encouraged Nowitzki to play a musical instrument and read literature to make him a more complete personality.

After a year, the coach was so impressed that he said to his pupil: "You must now decide whether you want to play against the best in the world or just stay a local hero in Germany. If you choose latter, we will stop training immediately, because nobody can prevent that anymore. But if you want to play against the best, we have to train on a daily basis." After pondering for two days, Nowitzki decided on the former. Geschwindner let him train seven days a week with DJK Würzburg players and future German internationals Robert Garrett, Marvin Willoughby and Demond Greene, and in the summer of 1994, the 16-year-old Nowitzki made the DJK squad.

DJK Würzburg (1994–98)

When Nowitzki joined the team, DJK played in the Second Bundesliga, South Division. His first trainer was Pit Stahl, who played the tall teenager as an outside-scoring forward rather than an inside-scoring center to utilise his shooting skills. In the 1994–95 Second Bundesliga season, ambitious DJK finished as a disappointing sixth of 12 teams; the rookie Nowitzki was often benched and struggled with bad school grades, which forced him to study rather than work on his game. In the next 1995–96 Second Bundesliga season, Nowitzki established himself as a starter next to Finnish star forward Martti Kuisma and soon became a regular double-digit scorer: after German national basketball coach Dirk Bauermann saw him score 24 points in a DJK game, he stated that "Dirk Nowitzki is the greatest German basketball talent of the last 10, maybe 15 years." DJK finished second in the South Division, but could not earn promotion after losing 86–62 in the deciding match versus BG Ludwigsburg: in that game, Nowitzki scored only eight points.

In the 1996–97 Second Bundesliga season, the team's top scorer Kuisma left the team, and Holger Geschwindner replaced Pit Stahl as head coach. Filling Kuisma's void, Nowitzki averaged 19.4 points per game and led DJK again to second place after the regular season, but could not help his team gain promotion. In the following 1997–98 Second Bundesliga season, Nowitzki finished his "Abitur" (German A-levels), but had to do his compulsory military service in the ''Bundeswehr'' (German Military) which lasted from September 1, 1997 to June 30, 1998; Nowitzki described this period as "a tough time at first; we had no privileges and had to participate in all the drills...later [after finishing the tough "Grundausbildung," the most intensive initial part of the service] it was much more relaxed." Concerning basketball, the 18-year old, who had grown to tall, made progress, leading DJK to a 36:4 point total (in Germany, a victory gives 2:0 points and a loss 0:2) and ending as leading scorer with 28.2 points per game. In the promotion playoffs, DJK finally broke its hex, finishing at first place with 14:2 points and earning promotion; Nowitzki scored 26 points in the deciding 95–88 win against Freiburg and was voted "German Basketballer of the Year" by the German BASKET magazine.

Abroad, Nowitzki's progress was noticed. In 1996, FC Barcelona Bàsquet wanted to sign him, but Nowitzki refused to move before finishing his German A-levels. A year later, the teenager participated in the Nike "Hoop Heroes Tour," where he played against NBA stars like Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen. In a 30-minute show match, Nowitzki outplayed Barkley and even dunked on him, causing the latter to exclaim: "The boy is a genius. If he wants to enter the NBA, he can call me." On March 29, 1998, Nowitzki was chosen to play in the Nike Hoop Summit, one of the premier talent watches in U.S. men's basketball. In a match between the U.S. talents and the international talents, Nowitzki scored 33 points on 6-of-12 shooting, 14 rebounds and 3 steals for the internationals and outplayed future US NBA stars Rashard Lewis and Al Harrington. He impressed with a combination of quickness, ball handling, and shooting range, and from that moment a multitude of European and NBA clubs wanted to recruit him.

Dallas Mavericks (1998–present)

Difficult start (1998–99)

After leading DJK Würzburg to promotion and with his Abitur and military service behind him, Nowitzki looked to the NBA for his future. Projected to be seventh pick in the 1998 NBA Draft, he passed up many college offers and leapt directly into the NBA as a then-still rare prep-to-pro player. In particular, Rick Pitino and Don Nelson, head coaches of the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks respectively, were highly interested in acquiring him. After a 45-minute private workout with Pitino, where Nowitzki showcased his versatile shooting, rebounding and passing skills, the Boston coach immediately compared him to Celtics legend Larry Bird; Pitino assured Nowitzki that he would draft him with the Celtics' first-round draft pick at number ten.

However, Pitino's plan was foiled by Nelson, whose team had the sixth pick. Nelson worked out draft day deals with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns: the Mavericks wanted Nowitzki and Suns reserve point guard Steve Nash; the Bucks desired muscular forward Robert Traylor, who was projected to be drafted before Nowitzki; and the Suns had set their sights on forward Pat Garrity, who was projected as a low first round pick. In the draft, the Mavericks drafted Traylor with their sixth pick, and the Bucks selected Nowitzki with their ninth and Garrity with their nineteenth pick. The Mavericks then traded Traylor to the Bucks for Nowitzki and Garrity, and they in return traded the latter to Phoenix for Nash.

In retrospect, Don Nelson, who had once coached the Bucks, had an outstanding trade instinct, essentially trading future career underachievers Traylor and Garrity for two future NBA MVPs in Nowitzki and Nash; in addition, the new recruits quickly became close friends. Nowitzki became only the fourth German player in NBA history, following pivots Uwe Blab and Christian Welp and All-Star swingman Detlef Schrempf, who was a 35-year old veteran player of the Portland Trail Blazers when his young compatriot arrived. Nowitzki finished his DJK career as the only Würzburg player to have ever made the jump into the NBA.

In Dallas, Nowitzki joined a franchise which had last made the playoffs in 1990. Shooting guard Michael Finley captained the squad, supported by center Shawn Bradley, once a number two draft pick, and team scoring leader Cedric Ceballos, an ex-Laker forward. Nowitzki experienced a rocky start: prior to the 1998–99 NBA season, NBA commissioner David Stern wanted to introduce a salary cap, causing the NBA players' union to declare a strike, the combination putting the entire season in jeopardy. In limbo, Nowitzki returned to DJK Würzburg and played thirteen games before both sides worked out a late compromise that resulted in a shortened 1998–1999 schedule of only 50 instead of 82 regular season games.

When the season finally started, Nowitzki struggled. Played as a power forward by coach Don Nelson, the lanky 20-year old felt overpowered by the more athletic NBA forwards, was intimidated by the expectations as a number nine pick, and played bad defense, causing hecklers to taunt him as "Irk Nowitzki," omitting the "D" which stands for "defense" in basketball slang. He only averaged 8.2 points and 3.4 rebounds in 20.4 minutes of playing time. Looking back, Nowitzki said: "I was so frustrated I even contemplated going back to Germany... [the jump from Second Bundesliga to the NBA] was like jumping out of an airplane hoping the parachute would somehow open." The Mavericks only won 19 of their 50 games and missed the playoffs, although Nowitzki completed the season with eight double-digit scoring games out of the last twelve.

Mark Cuban and the "Big Three" (1999–2004)

;1999–2000 season

In the 1999–2000 NBA season, Don Nelson wanted to use Nowitzki as a point forward to make use of his passing skills. However, one of the most important moves was made off the hardwood: until then, the owner of the Mavericks was Ross Perot, Jr., who had bought the franchise for $125 million, but had no plans of investing in players and admitted he knew little of basketball. On January 4, 2000, he sold the Mavericks to Internet billionaire Mark Cuban for $280 million. Cuban quickly invested into the Mavericks and restructured the franchise, attending every game at the sidelines, buying the team a $46 million six-star Boeing 757 for traveling, and increasing franchise revenues to over $100 million. Nowitzki lauded Cuban: "He created the perfect environment... we only have to go out and win." As a result of Nelson's tutelage, Cuban's improvements and his own progress, Nowitzki significantly improved his averages. The second-year pro now averaged 17.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game in 35.8 minutes, had nine double-double games, and scored a career-high 32 points twice. He was voted runner-up in the NBA Most Improved Player Award behind Jalen Rose, and made it into the NBA All-Star Sophomore squad along with peers Paul Pierce and Vince Carter. In the traditional Rookie-Sophomore match, he scored 17 points, grabbed six rebounds and dished out four assists in an overtime loss against the rookie team led by Steve Francis and Lamar Odom. The Nowitzki also was chosen for the NBA All-Star Three Point Shootout, becoming the tallest player ever to participate. After draining 15 three point shots in a row in the first shootout, he entered the final round, where he finished as runner-up to Jeff Hornacek. While he improved on an individual level, the Mavericks missed the playoffs after a mediocre 40–42 season.

;2000–01 season

In the following 2000–01 NBA season, Nowitzki further improved his averages, recording 21.8 points, 9.2 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. Now playing the power forward position, he became the second player in NBA history after Robert Horry to score 100 three-pointers and 100 blocks in the regular season by registering 151 and 101, respectively. As a sign of his growing importance, he joined team captain Finley as only one of two Mavericks to play and start in all 82 games and had 10 games in which he scored at least 30 points. Nowitzki became the first Maverick ever to be voted into the All-NBA squads, making the Third Team. In addition, his best friend Nash became a valuable point guard, and with Finley scoring more than ever, pundits were calling this trio the "Big Three" of the Mavericks.

Posting a 53–29 record in the regular season, the Mavericks reached the playoffs for the first time since 1990. As the fifth seed, they were paired against the Utah Jazz of all-time assist leader John Stockton and second all-time leading scorer Karl Malone. After losing the first two games, Nowitzki scored 33 points in both games 3 and 4 and helped to tie the series. In Game 5, the Mavericks trailed the entire game until Calvin Booth drained a jump shot which put them ahead 84–83 with 9.8 seconds to go. Jazz players Bryon Russell and Malone missed last-second shots and the Mavericks won, setting up a meeting with Texas rivals San Antonio Spurs of All-Star power forward Tim Duncan. The Mavericks lost their first three games, and Nowitzki fell ill with flu and later lost a tooth after a collision with Spurs guard Terry Porter. After a Game 4 win, Nowitzki scored 42 points and 18 rebounds in Game 5, but could not prevent a deciding 105–87 loss. While ''Sports Illustrated'' pointed out that the Mavericks shot badly during Game 5, Nowitzki was lauded for scoring his playoff career-high 42 points. The German said: "It's a disappointment to end the season on a blowout."

;2001–02 season

Prior to the 2001–02 NBA season, Nowitzki signed a six-year, $90 million contract extension, which made him the second highest-paid German athlete after Formula One champion Michael Schumacher. He continued to improve, now averaging 23.4 points, 9.9 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game, was voted into the All-NBA Second Team and into his first All-Star Game. He also had 13 games with at least 30 points and 10 rebounds, third behind Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan. Powered by new recruit Nick Van Exel, who became a high-scoring sixth man, the Mavericks "Big Three" convincingly made the playoffs with a 57–25 record.

The Mavericks swept Kevin Garnett and the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the 2002 NBA Playoffs 3–0: Nowitzki outscored Garnett with 33.3 points per game versus 24.0. In the second round, the Mavericks met the Sacramento Kings with rival power forward Chris Webber. After splitting the first two games, Kings coach Rick Adelman changed his defensive scheme: before, Webber had defended Nowitzki one-on-one, but now, the Kings coach ordered his smaller but quicker player Hedo Turkoglu to cover the German. Turkoglu should use his agility to play Nowitzki tightly, and if the taller Maverick tried to post up Turkoglu, Webber would double team Nowitzki. In Game 3 in Dallas, the Mavericks lost 125–119; Nowitzki scored only 19 points and said: "I simply could not pass Turkoglu, and if I did, I ran into a double team and committed too many turnovers." In Game 4, more frustration awaited the German: the Mavericks gave away a 14-point lead, although the entire Kings starting frontcourt of center Vlade Divac and power forward Chris Webber (both fouled out) and small forward Peja Stojakovic (injury) were eliminated in the closing stages of the game. Nowitzki missed two potentially game deciding jump shots, and the Mavericks lost 115–113 at home. In Game 5, the demoralised Texans were no match for the spirited Kings, lost 114–101 and were eliminated again. Among others, nba.com remarked that the Kings defended better than the Mavericks: in those five games, the statisticians counted 115 Sacramento layups against the Mavericks, meaning the Kings averaged 23 uncontested baskets (i.e. 46 easy points) per game. However, Nowitzki received a consolation award: the ''Gazzetta dello Sport'' voted him as "European Basketballer of the Year," his 104 votes lifting him over second-placed Dejan Bodiroga (54) and Stojakovic (50).

;2002–03 season

Before the 2002–03 NBA season, Don Nelson and Mark Cuban put more emphasis on defense in the training drills, specialising in a zone defense anchored by prolific shotblockers Raef LaFrentz and Shawn Bradley. The Mavericks won their first 11 games, and Finley, Nash and Nowitzki were voted "Western Conference Players of the Month" in November 2002. In that season, Nowitzki lifted his averages again, now scoring 25.1 points, 9.9 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game. In addition, the German had 41 double-double games, the seventh highest figure that season. By averaging 25.1, he became the first European to score 2,000 points in a season. As a reward, he was voted into the All-Star game and the All-NBA Second Team again, and was also runner-up in the "German Athlete of the Year" election, only losing to ski jumper Sven Hannawald. He led the Mavericks to a franchise-high 60–22 record, which earned them the third seed: as a result, the Mavericks had to play sixth seed Portland Trail Blazers in the 2003 NBA Playoffs. Now playing in a best-of-seven series instead of the former best-of-five, Dallas quickly won the first three games, but then the Mavericks completely lost their rhythm and lost the next three matches. In Game 7, Portland held the game close, but 90 seconds before the end, Nowitzki hit a clutch three point shot, and the game ended 107–95 for the Mavericks. "This was the most important basket of my career," he later said, "I was not prepared to go on vacation that early." He later added in an ESPN interview: "We had to be more physical in the paint and rebound the ball. We worked hard all season to get the home-court advantage and we used that advantage today."

In the next round, the Mavericks met the Kings again. After losing the first game at home by a score of 113–124, Nowitzki (25 points) and veteran sixth man Van Exel (36) led Dallas to a spectacular 132–110 Game 2 win in which the Mavericks scored 83 points in the first half. Helped by the fact that Kings star forward Chris Webber injured his meniscus, Nowitzki and Van Exel led the Mavericks to a 141–137 overtime win in Game 3, before dropping Game 4 99–83, where Nowitzki only scored 11 points and was ejected after angrily kicking over a load of towels. After splitting the next two games, Nowitzki delivered a clutch performance in Game 7, scoring 30 points, grabbing 19 rebounds and playing strong defense, and led the Mavericks to a series-deciding 112–99 win. ESPN lauded Nowitzki as "Big D," and after again winning a Game 7, the German added: "We've really learned how to close games out."

In the Western Conference Finals, the Mavericks met the San Antonio Spurs of Tim Duncan again. In Game 1 in San Antonio, Nowitzki scored 38 points on Duncan and led his team to a 113–110 win. In Game 2, Duncan quickly put Nowitzki in foul trouble, and the Spurs equalised the series with a 132–110 win. In Game 3, fate struck as Nowitzki went up for a rebound and Spurs guard Manu Ginóbili collided with his knee, forcing him out of the series: without their top scorer, the Mavericks still fought valiantly and trailed 3–2, before Spurs guard Steve Kerr got hot from three-point range late in Game 6 to help San Antonio clinch the series with a 90–78 victory. Don Nelson later commented: "We were playing so well for so long and the bottom just dropped out...We went cold at the wrong time." Nowitzki took very little consolation in the fact that he again was voted "European Basketballer of the Year" and was named "Best European Basketballer" in a general survey of the NBA general managers.

;2003–04 season

In the 2003–04 NBA season, Mark Cuban and Don Nelson decided to add more offensive wing players to their squad. As a result, the Mavericks acquired two All-Star forwards, namely Golden State Warriors All-Star forward Antawn Jamison (along with Danny Fortson, Jiri Welsch and Chris Mills, for Van Exel and role players) and Antoine Walker (Boston Celtics) who came for center Raef LaFrentz. Basketball experts were wary about latter trade, because it sent away the Mavericks starting center; they argued it left a hole in the middle that the aging, injury-prone backup pivot Shawn Bradley could not fill anymore. Unable to trade for a new center, Don Nelson decided to start the prolific rebounder Nowitzki at pivot, put Walker on Nowitzki's usual power forward spot and played Jamison as a high-scoring sixth man. To cope with his more physical role, Nowitzki put on of muscle mass over summer, sacrificed part of his agility, and put more emphasis on defense rather than scoring: as a result, his averages fell for the first time in his career, dropping to 21.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game, but he still led the Mavericks in scoring, rebounding, steals (1.2 spg) and blocks (1.35 bpg). These figures earned him nominations for the All-Star game and the All-NBA Third Team. Compiling a 52–30 record, the Mavericks met their familiar rivals Sacramento Kings again, but were eliminated in just five games.

Franchise player (2004–present)

;2004–05 season

Before the 2004–05 NBA season, the Mavericks were re-tooled again. Defensive center Erick Dampier was acquired from the Golden State Warriors, but Nowitzki's close friend Steve Nash left Dallas and returned to the Phoenix Suns as a free agent. During the season, long-time head coach Don Nelson resigned, and his assistant Avery Johnson took on coaching duties. In the midst of these changes, Nowitzki stepped up his game and averaged 26.1 points a game (a career-high) 9.7 rebounds, and his 1.5 blocks and 3.1 assists were also career numbers. In addition, Nowitzki scored at least 10 points in every game and was only one of four players who registered at least 1.2 steals and 1.2 blocks per game. This was also his second 2,000 point season, his 26.1 points scoring average set a new record by a European player. On December 2, 2004, Nowitzki scored 53 points in an overtime win against the Houston Rockets, a career best. As a reward, Nowitzki was voted to the All-NBA First Team for the first time. He also placed third in the league's MVP voting, behind Nash and Shaquille O'Neal. By being elected to the All-NBA First Team, Nowitzki became the first player who did not attend a United States high school or college to be on the All-NBA First Team.

However, the Mavericks had a subpar 2005 NBA Playoffs campaign. In the first round, Dallas met the Houston Rockets of scoring champion Tracy McGrady and 7–6 center Yao Ming, and Nowitzki was expected to average high figures against unheralded forward Ryan Bowen: nba.com described Bowen as "overmatched" versus the German. Instead, Bowen limited Nowitzki to just 21 points in Game 1 and 26 points in Game 2, where the latter only hit 8 of 26 shots from the field. The Rockets took a 2–0 lead before the Mavericks won three games in a row. After losing Game 6, Dallas won Game 7 convincingly and won the series even though Nowitzki struggled with his shooting. In the Western Conference Semifinals, the Mavericks met the Phoenix Suns, the new club of Nash. They split the first four games, before the Suns won the last two games. In Game 6, which the Mavericks lost in overtime, Nowitzki was again not at his best: he scored 28 points, but also sank only 9 of his 25 field goal attempts; in addition, he was visibly irritated, repeatedly shouting at his team mates and missing all his five shots in overtime.

;2005–06 season

Prior to the 2005–06 NBA season, veteran Mavericks captain Michael Finley was waived over the summer, and now Nowitzki was the last player remaining from the Mavericks' "Big Three" of Nash, Finley, and himself. Nowitzki blossomed as the sole franchise player, averaging 26.6 points, 9.0 rebounds, and 2.8 assists. Not only was this his third 2,000 point season, but his scoring average of 26.6 points was highest ever by a European. He improved his shooting percentage, setting personal season records in field goals (48.0%), three-point shots (40.6%) and free throws (90.1%). During the 2006 All-Star Weekend in Houston, Nowitzki scored 18 points to defeat Seattle SuperSonics guard Ray Allen and Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas in the Three-Point Shootout contest.

Nowitzki paced the Mavericks to a 60-win season. The team finished with the third-best record in the league, behind the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and defending Eastern Conference champion Detroit Pistons. As in the 2004–05 season, he finished third in the league's MVP voting, this time behind Nash and LeBron James. He was again elected to the first team All-NBA squad. Nowitzki confirmed his superstar status during the playoffs as he averaged 27.0 points, 11.7 rebounds, and 2.9 assists. The Mavericks swept the Memphis Grizzlies with 4–0, with Nowitzki's most spectacular play being a clutch three-point shot in the closing seconds of Game 3 which tied the game and forced overtime. In the Western Conference Semifinals, the Mavericks played against the San Antonio Spurs again. After splitting the first six games, the Mavericks took a 20-point lead in Game 7 before Spur Manu Ginóbili broke a tie at 101 by hitting a clutch 3 with 30 seconds left. On the next play, Nowitzki completed a three-point play, which tied the game at 104. In the end, the Mavericks won 119–111, and Nowitzki ended the game with 37 points and 15 rebounds. Nowitzki commented: "I don't know how the ball went in. Manu hit my hand. It was a lucky bounce."

The Mavericks advanced to the Western Conference Finals, where they would again meet Nash and the Phoenix Suns. Nowitzki scored 50 points to lead the Mavericks to a victory in the crucial Game 5 with the series tied 2–2; the Mavericks would go on to win in six games and face the Miami Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals. A content Nowitzki commented: "We've been a good road team all season long, we believed in each other. We went through some ups and downs this season, but the playoffs is all about showing heart and playing together." Of Nowitzki's performance, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons would remark, "Dirk is playing at a higher level than any forward since Bird." The Mavericks took an early 2–0 lead, but then gave away a late 15-point lead in a Game 3 loss and finally fell to a scoring onslaught by Heat Finals MVP Dwyane Wade: Wade scored at least 36 points in the next four games, which the Heat all won. Nowitzki only made 20 of his last 55 shots in the final 3 games as the Mavericks lost the Finals series 4–2 to the Heat. The German was criticised by ESPN as "clearly... not as his best this series" and remarked: "That was a tough loss (in Game 3) and that really changed the whole momentum of the series... After that, they got confidence. They played a lot better afterwards."

;2006–07 season

The 2006–07 season was the year Nowitzki was named the league's Most Valuable Player. He shot a career-best 50.2% from the field, and recorded averages of 24.6 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 3.4 assists and led the Mavericks to a franchise-high 67 wins, which meant Dallas earned the first seed of the 2007 NBA Playoffs. Nowitzki was touted as the overwhelming favorite for the Most Valuable Player award, and was expected to lead the Mavericks to an easy win against the eighth seed Golden State Warriors, despite the Warriors having won all three regular season meetings against Dallas. However, the Mavericks ended up losing to the Warriors in six games, marking the first time a #8 seed has beaten the #1 in a best of seven series in NBA history. In the clinching Game 6, Nowitzki shot just 2–13 from the field for only eight points. Defended by Stephen Jackson, Nowitzki averaged nearly five points less than his regular season average in that series and shot only 38.3% from the field as compared to 50.2% during the regular season. He described this loss as a low point in his career: "This series, I couldn't put my stamp on it the way I wanted to. That's why I'm very disappointed." In spite of this historic playoffs loss, Nowitzki was named the NBA's regular season Most Valuable Player and beat his friend and back-to-back NBA MVP Nash with more than 100 votes. He also became the first European-born player in NBA history to receive the honor.

;2007–08 season

The 2007–08 campaign saw another first-round playoffs exit for Nowitzki and his Mavericks. Despite a mid-season blockbuster trade that sent veteran NBA All-Star Jason Kidd to Dallas, the Mavericks could only finish seventh in a highly competitive Western Conference. Nowitzki averaged 23.6 points, 8.6 rebounds, and a career-high 3.5 assists for the season. In the playoffs, they faced rising star Chris Paul's New Orleans Hornets, and were eliminated in five games. The few positive highlights that season for the German were his first career triple-double against the Milwaukee Bucks on February 6, 2008, with 29 points, 10 rebounds, and a career-high 12 assists, and on March 8, 2008 (34 points against the New Jersey Nets), when he surpassed Rolando Blackman with his 16,644th point to become the Mavericks' all-time career points leader.

;2008–09 season

The 2008–09 NBA season saw Nowitzki finish with averages of 25.9 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 2.4 assists. He was fourth in the league in scoring, and garnered his fourth All-NBA First Team selection. He also made the 2009 All-Star game, his eighth appearance. Nowitzki led Dallas to a tight finish towards the playoffs, finishing 50–32 for the season (6th in the West), after a slow 2–7 start. In the playoffs, the German led Dallas to an upset win over long-time rival San Antonio (3rd seed), winning the first round series 4–1. The Mavericks, however, fell short against the Denver Nuggets 4–1 in the second round, with Nowitzki averaging 34.4 points, 11.6 rebounds, and 4 assists in the series.

;2009–10 season

The Mavericks finished the 2009–10 NBA season as the second seed for the playoffs—it was their 10th consecutive season with at least 50 regular season wins. Notable additions to the squad were multiple All-Stars Shawn Marion and Caron Butler, with the latter coming in the latter half of the season. On January 13, 2010, Nowitzki became the 34th player in NBA history—and the first European—to hit the 20,000 point milestone, while ending the regular season with averages of 25 points, 7.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 1 block. He was selected to the 2010 All-Star game, his ninth appearance. The Mavericks faced off against San Antonio once more in the first round of the playoffs, but for the third time in four seasons, they failed to progress to the next round. Nowitzki was the only consistent player throughout the series for the Mavericks, averaging 26.7 points per outing, while the likes of Jason Terry, second leading scorer for the Mavericks averaged only 12.7 points per game compared to his 16.6 regular season. Despite being a free agent, on July 5, 2010 Nowitzki agreed to remain with Dallas by re-signing to a four-year, $80 million deal.

;2010–11 season

The most significant changes to the 2010–11 team roster was the arrival of Tyson Chandler via a trade. Nowitzki was injured in the middle of the season, during which the Mavericks would record their worst losing streak in over a decade. Nowitzki finished the regular season with averages of 23 points, 7 rebounds, and 2.7 assists. Despite missing 9 games, Nowitzki was selected to the 2011 All-Star game, his tenth appearance. The Mavericks concluded the regular season with 57 wins, seeding third behind the Spurs and the Lakers for the 2011 NBA Playoffs. During the playoffs, despite their seeding, many predicted that Dallas would lose in the first round to Portland, and after blowing a 23-point third-quarter lead in game four to even the series at 2–2, the Mavericks appeared ready for another postseason collapse. However, Dallas won the final two games to advance, and then swept Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and the two-time defending champion Lakers in the semi-finals in Phil Jackson's final year as an NBA coach. In the Conference Finals, they faced the Oklahoma City Thunder and their All-NBA duo of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. In Game 1 of that series, Nowitzki scored 48 points while taking only 15 shots en route to setting an NBA playoff record of 24 consecutive free throws made in a game as well as most free throws in a game without a miss. In the pivotal Game 4, with the series 2–1 in favor of Dallas, Nowitzki scored 40 points to rally his team from a double-digit fourth quarter deficit and secure an overtime win for his team. Dallas overcame another fourth-quarter deficit in Game 5 to win the series and the Western Conference Championship. In the Finals, Dallas once again faced Dwyane Wade's Miami Heat, which had acquired All-Stars LeBron James and Chris Bosh before the season began. During the Game 1 loss in Miami, Nowitzki tore a tendon in his left middle finger; however, MRIs were negative, and Nowitzki vowed that the injury would not be a factor. In Game 2, Nowitzki led a Dallas rally from 15 points down in the 4th quarter, capped by a driving left-handed layup over Bosh to tie the series at 1–1. After Nowitzki missed a potential game tying shot at the end of Game 3, Miami took a 2–1 series lead. Despite carrying a 101 degree fever in Game 4, Nowitzki scored the winning basket to level the series 2–2, evoking comparisons of Michael Jordan's flu-ridden performance against Utah in the 1997 NBA Finals. Dallas went on to win the next two games, with Nowitzki scoring 10 fourth-quarter points in the series-clinching game in Miami, bringing the first championship to the franchise. In the series, Nowitzki scored 62 points total in the six fourth quarters, equaling the combined fourth quarter output of James and Wade. He was named Finals MVP, joining a distinguished list of 10 other players to have been an NBA champion, NBA Finals MVP, NBA regular season MVP, and a 10-time All-Star. For the whole 2011 playoffs, Nowitzki averaged 27.7 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 2.5 assists in 21 games.

International career

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Nowitzki has been playing for the German national basketball team since the 1999 FIBA European championships. In his debut tournament, the 21-year old rookie emerged as the main German scorer, but Germany finished seventh and failed to qualify for the 2000 Olympic Games. In the 2001 FIBA European Championships, Nowitzki was top scorer with 28.7 points per game, and narrowly lost the MVP vote to Serbian player Peja Stojaković. Germany reached the semi-finals and were close to beating host nation Turkey, but down by three, Hedo Turkoglu hit a three-point buzzer beater, and the Turks eventually won in overtime. Germany then lost 99–90 against Spain, and did not win a medal. However, with averages of 28.7 points and 9.1 rebounds, Nowitzki led the tournament in both statistics, and was voted to the All-Star team. Back home, the German basketball team attracted up to 3.7 million television viewers, a German basketball record at the time.

Nowitzki finally earned his first medal when he led Germany to a bronze medal in the 2002 World Championships. In the quarter-finals against the Pau Gasol-led Spain, Spain led 52–46 after three quarters, but then Nowitzki scored 10 points in the last quarter and led Germany to a 70–62 win. In the semi-finals, his team played against the Argentinian squad led by Manu Ginóbili, but despite leading 74–69 four minutes from the end and despite Argentina losing Ginobili to a foot injury, the South Americans won 86–80. However, the Germans won 117–94 against New Zealand in the consolation finals and won bronze, and tournament top scorer Nowitzki (24.0 ppg) was elected MVP. Back in Germany, over 4 million television viewers followed the games, an all-time record in German basketball history.

The 2003 FIBA European Championships proved to be a major disappointment for Nowitzki and his German squad. In a preparation game, he suffered a foot injury after a collision with French player Florent Pietrus; as a result, Nowitzki played inconsistently and was also often target of hard fouls. In the decisive second round match against Italy (only the winner was allowed to play the medal round), Germany lost 86–84, finished ninth and did not qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games. Nowitzki scored 22.5 points per game (third overall), but in general seemed to lack focus and dominance due to his injury.

In the 2005 FIBA European Championships, Nowitzki came back strong. He surprisingly led a depleted German squad into the Finals, beating title favorites Slovenia in the quarter-finals and Spain in the semi-finals on the way. Eurobasket pundits praised Nowitzki in both matches: against Slovenia (76–62), the forward scored a game high 22 points and commented: "The Slovenians underestimated us. They said we were the team they wanted and that was wrong, you shouldn't do that in the quarter-finals." Against Spain (74–73), Nowitzki scored a game-high 27 points and scored the decisive basket: down by one and with only a few seconds to go, he drove on Spanish forward Jorge Garbajosa, and hit a baseline jump shot over Garbajosa's outstretched arms with 3.9 seconds to go. The German later commented: "It was indescribable. Garbajosa kind of pushed me towards the baseline so I just went with it." Despite losing the Finals 78–62 to the Greeks, Nowitzki was the tournament's leading scorer (26.7 ppg) and second-leading rebounder (10.8 rpg) and shot blocker (1.8 bpg), and was voted Most Valuable Player of the tournament. When he was subbed out towards the end of the final, Nowitzki received standing ovation from the crowd, which he later recalled as "one of the best moments of [his] career". In the 2006 FIBA World Championships, Nowitzki led the German team to an eighth place and commented: "It's tough luck. But overall, finishing eighth in the world is not bad."

In the 2007 FIBA European Championships, in which the top three teams automatically qualified for the 2008 Olympics, Nowitzki led Germany to a fifth place. He was the leading scorer with 24.0 points per game. The fifth place meant that Germany fell short of direct qualification, but was allowed to participate in the 2008 Olympic Qualifying Tournament. Nowitzki led Germany into a decisive match against Puerto Rico for the last remaining slot. In that crucial match, he scored a game-high 32 points and was vital for the 96–82 win which sent the German basketball team to their first Olympics since the 1992 Summer Olympics. Nowitzki was chosen to be the flag bearer for the German Olympic Team at the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Olympics. Nowitzki led the German team to a tenth place finish, and averaged 17.0 points, and 7.6 rebounds for the tournament. In 2009, Nowitzki skipped the 2009 FIBA European Championships. In July 2010 he said that he would skip the 2010 FIBA World Championship.

In July 2011, Nowitzki confirmed that he will play in the EuroBasket 2011 to help his team to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Player profile

Nowitzki is a versatile frontcourt player who mostly plays the power forward position, but has also played center, small forward and point forward throughout his career. Nowitzki hits almost 88% of his free throws, connects on almost 50% of his field goal attempts and on almost 40% of his three-point shots, and won the 2006 NBA All-Star Three-Point Shootout competition. In 2006–07 Nowitzki became only the fifth member of the NBA's 50–40–90 Club for players who shot 50% or better from the field, 40% or better on three-pointers, and 90% or better on free-throws in a single season while achieving the NBA league minimum number of makes in each category.

Throughout Nowitzki's career, he has responded to the increased pressure of the playoffs by increasing his productivity. In the regular season he averages 23 points, 8.4 rebounds. In the playoffs he averages 25.9 points and 10.4 rebounds, which only Hakeem Olajuwon, Bob Pettit and Elgin Baylor have managed to do. In the most pressure packed games, such as playoff elimination games he averages 28.4 points, 12.2 rebounds. He has had 13 elimination games where he scored 30 or more points, with only Jerry West having more at 14. Of the top 100 elimination game performances in the last 20 years, Nowitzki has had the best performances in 8 of them, more than any other player in the NBA in that same time frame.

His shooting accuracy combined with his long seven-foot frame and unique shooting mechanics, such as having a release point above his head, makes contesting his jump shots incredibly difficult. Additionally, he can put the ball down and drive with it from the perimeter, like few have been able to do with his size. NBA.com lauds his versatility by stating: "The 7–0 forward who at times mans the pivot can strike fear in an opponent when he corrals a rebound and leads the break or prepares to launch a three-point bomb." Charles Barkley describes the best way to guard Nowitzki is to "get a cigarette and a blindfold". When defenses guard Nowitzki with one of their biggest men, who is then pulled out to the perimeter, the net effect is that while Nowitzki's own statistics are actually compromised by being out of position to offensively rebound or make an easy close-range basket, the rest of the team becomes more offensively potent with the defense having to be spread across the floor. Often, this creates player mismatches that Nowitzki's teammates can exploit.

Some critics have alleged Nowitzki's defense is a weakness, as he averages just over one block per game and never made an All-Defense Team. However, playing more around the perimeter takes him out of position where a typical power forward would be detracts from his overall defensive stats. Despite the claims of lack of defense, he is ranked 8th in active players for defensive win shares, placing him higher than Kobe Bryant, who has made the All-Defensive team 11 times.

Nowitzki is the 34th player in NBA history, and the first European, to hit the 20,000-point milestone. Apart from being the Dallas Mavericks' all-time leader in points, rebounds, field goals, field goal attempts, 3-pointers, 3-point attempts, free throws, and free-throw attempts, Nowitzki has made the NBA All-Star games ten times, and the All-NBA Teams eleven times. He was voted NBA MVP of the 2006–07 NBA season, becoming the first European player to receive the honor, as well as the MVP of the 2011 NBA Finals. Other achievements include winning the 2006 NBA All-Star Three-Point Shootout, being voted European Basketballer of the Year five times in a row by ''La Gazzetta dello Sport'', and being the leading scorer and MVP of the 2002 FIBA World Championship, and Eurobasket 2005 tournaments.

NBA career statistics

:(''Correct as of June 12, 2011'')

Regular season

|- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 1998–99 | align="left" | Dallas | 47 || 24 || 20.4 || .405 || .206 || .773 || 3.4 || 1.0 || .6 || .6 || 8.2 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 1999–00 | align="left" | Dallas | 82 || 81 || 35.8 || .461 || .379 || .830 || 6.5 || 2.5 || .8 || .8 || 17.5 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2000–01 | align="left" | Dallas | 82 || 82 || 38.1 || .474 || .387 || .838 || 9.2 || 2.1 || 1.0 || 1.2 || 21.8 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2001–02 | align="left" | Dallas | 76 || 76 || 38.0 || .477 || .397 || .853 || 9.9 || 2.4 || 1.1 || 1.0 || 23.4 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2002–03 | align="left" | Dallas | 80 || 80 || 39.0 || .463 || .379 || .881 || 9.9 || 3.0 || 1.4 || 1.0 || 25.1 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2003–04 | align="left" | Dallas | 77 || 77 || 37.9 || .462 || .341 || .877 || 8.7 || 2.7 || 1.2 || 1.4 || 21.8 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2004–05 | align="left" | Dallas | 78 || 78 || 38.7 || .459 || .399 || .869 || 9.7 || 3.1 || 1.2 || 1.5 || 26.1 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2005–06 | align="left" | Dallas | 81 || 81 || 38.1 || .480 || .406 || .901 || 9.0 || 2.8 || .7 || 1.0 || 26.6 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2006–07 | align="left" | Dallas | 78 || 78 || 36.2 || .502 || .416 || .904 || 8.9 || 3.4 || .7 || .8 || 24.6 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2007–08 | align="left" | Dallas | 77 || 77 || 36.0 || .479 || .359 || .879 || 8.6 || 3.5 || .7 || .9 || 23.6 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2008–09 | align="left" | Dallas | 81 || 81 || 37.7 || .479 || .359 || .890 || 8.4 || 2.4 || .8 || .8 || 25.9 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2009–10 | align="left" | Dallas | 81 || 80 || 37.5 || .481 || .421 || .915 || 7.7 || 2.7 || .9 || 1.0 || 25.0 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2010–11 | align="left" | Dallas | 73 || 73 || 34.3 || .517 || .393 || .892 || 7.0 || 2.6 || .5 || .6 || 23.0 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | Career | align="left" | | 993 || 968 || 36.5 || .476 || .381 || .877 || 8.4 || 2.7 || .9 || 1.0 || 23.0 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | All-Star | align="left" | | 9 || 2 || 17.0 || .458 || .227 || .875 || 4.1 || 1.6 || .8 || .4 || 10.6

Playoffs

|- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2001 | align="left" | Dallas | 10 || 10 || 39.9 || .423 || .283 || .883 || 8.1 || 1.4 || 1.1 || .8 || 23.4 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2002 | align="left" | Dallas | 8 || 8 || 44.6 || .445 || .571 || .878 || 13.1 || 2.3 || 2.0 || .8 || 28.4 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2003 | align="left" | Dallas | 17 || 17 || 42.5 || .479 || .443 || .912 || 11.5 || 2.2 || 1.2 || .9 || 25.3 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2004 | align="left" | Dallas | 5 || 5 || 42.4 || .450 || .467 || .857 || 11.8 || 1.4 || 1.4 || 2.6 || 26.6 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2005 | align="left" | Dallas | 13 || 13 || 42.4 || .402 || .333 || .829 || 10.1 || 3.3 || 1.4 || 1.6 || 23.7 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2006 | align="left" | Dallas | 23 || 23 || 42.7 || .468 || .343 || .895 || 11.7 || 2.9 || 1.1 || .6 || 27.0 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2007 | align="left" | Dallas | 6 || 6 || 39.8 || .383 || .211 || .840 || 11.3 || 2.3 || 1.8 || 1.3 || 19.7 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2008 | align="left" | Dallas | 5 || 5 || 42.2 || .473 || .333 || .808 || 12.0 || 4.0 || .2 || 1.4 || 26.8 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2009 | align="left" | Dallas | 10 || 10 || 39.5 || .518 || .286 || .925 || 10.1 || 3.1 || .9 || .8 || 26.8 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2010 | align="left" | Dallas | 6 || 6 || 38.8 || .547 || .571 || .952 || 8.2 || 3.0 || .8 || .7 || 26.7 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | 2011 | align="left" | Dallas | 21 || 21 || 39.3 || .485 || .460 || .941 || 8.1 || 2.5 || .6 || .6 || 27.7 |- style="text-align: Center;" | align="left" | Career | align="left" | | 124 || 124 || 41.3 || .463 || .384 || .892 || 10.4 || 2.6 || 1.1 || 1.0 || 25.9

Personal life

Nowitzki's older sister, Silke Nowitzki, describes Dirk Nowitzki, four years her junior, as a confident but low-key character, unspoiled by money and fame. He also enjoys reading and playing the saxophone. Nowitzki passed his Abitur examination at Röntgen Gymnasium Grammar School of Würzburg. He also founded the "Dirk Nowitzki Foundation," a charity which aims at fighting poverty in Africa.

Nowitzki dated Sybille Gerer, a female basketball player from his local club DJK Würzburg. The relationship started in 1992 and held on for 10 years before it eventually ended; Nowitzki said, "At the end, we found out we developed in separate ways.... It did not work anymore, but we are still good friends." He added: "I surely want to start a family and have kids, but I cannot imagine it happening before I become 30." In 2010, Nowitzki met and began dating Jessica Olsson, sister of twin Swedish footballers Martin Olsson and Marcus Olsson.

Nowitzki acknowledged close ties to his mentor Holger Geschwindner, whom he called his best friend. He is also good friends with his ex-teammate Steve Nash. Nash said of playing with Nowitzki, "We were both joining a new club, living in a new city, we were both single and outsiders: this creates a bond... He made life easier for me and I for him... our friendship was something solid in a very volatile world." Nowitzki added, "He would have also become a good friend if we had met at the supermarket."

Books

Nowitzki's career has been the subject of the book ''Dirk Nowitzki – german wunderkind'' by German sports journalists Dino Reisner and Holger Sauer. It appeared in 2004 at the CoPress Munich publishing house under the ISBN 3-7679-0872-7. The 160-page hardcover book follows Nowitzki's beginnings in his native Würzburg and documents his entry and ascent in the NBA, and ends at the beginning of the 2004–05 NBA season.

See also

List of National Basketball Association career scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association career 3-point scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association career free throw scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association career playoff scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association career playoff 3-point scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association career playoff free throw scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association players with 9 or more steals in a game

List of National Basketball Association players with 50 or more points in a playoff game

2008 Summer Olympics national flag bearers

References

External links

Official Dirk Nowitzki Foundation

}} Pau Gasol | years= 2005 | after= Jorge Garbajosa}} }}

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:1978 births Category:Living people Category:People from Würzburg Category:Dallas Mavericks players Category:German expatriate basketball people in the United States Category:Olympic basketball players of Germany Category:Basketball players at the 2008 Summer Olympics Category:Milwaukee Bucks draft picks Category:Power forwards (basketball) Category:NBA Finals MVP Award winners

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