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	Kirsten Dunst
alt	Kirsten Dunst is pictured outdoors; she has wavy red hair and is wearing a white dress with ruffles around the collar and in front.
birth date	April 30, 1982
birth place	Point Pleasant, New Jersey, United States
birth name	Kirsten Caroline Dunst
occupation	Actress, singer, model
years active	1989–present }}

Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982) is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in ''Oedipus Wrecks'', a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology ''New York Stories'' (1989). At the age of 12, Dunst gained widespread recognition playing the role of vampire Claudia in ''Interview with the Vampire'' (1994), a performance for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. The same year she appeared in ''Little Women'', to further acclaim.

Dunst achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of Mary Jane Watson in the ''Spider-Man'' trilogy (2002–07). Since then her films have included the romantic comedy ''Wimbledon'' (2004), the romantic science fiction ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004) and Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy ''Elizabethtown'' (2005). She played the title role in Sofia Coppola's ''Marie Antoinette'' (2006) and starred in the comedy ''How to Lose Friends & Alienate People'' (2008). She won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for her performance in Lars von Trier's ''Melancholia''.

In 2001, Dunst made her singing debut in the film ''Get Over It'', in which she performed two songs. She also sang the jazz song "After You've Gone" for the end credits of the film ''The Cat's Meow'' (2001).

Early life

Dunst was born at Point Pleasant, New Jersey, to Inez (née Rupprecht) and Klaus Dunst. She has one younger brother. Her father worked as a medical services executive, and her mother was an artist and one-time gallery owner. Dunst is of German descent on her father's side, and Swedish on her mother's.

Until the age of six, Dunst lived in Brick Township, New Jersey, where she attended Ranney School. In 1991, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Los Angeles, California, where she attended Laurel Hall Day School. In 1995, her mother filed for divorce. The following year Dunst began attending Notre Dame, a private Catholic high school in Los Angeles.

After graduating from Notre Dame, Dunst continued the acting career that she had begun at the age of eight. As a teenager, she found it difficult to deal with her rising fame, and for a period she blamed her mother for pushing her into acting as a child. However, she later expressed that her mother "always had the best intentions". When asked if she had any regrets about the way she spent her childhood, Dunst said: "Well, it's not a natural way to grow up, but it's the way I grew up and I wouldn't change it. I have my stuff to work out ... I don't think anybody can sit around and say: 'My life is more screwed up than yours.' Everybody has their issues."

Career

Early work

Dunst began her career when she was three years old as a child fashion model in television commercials. She was signed with Ford Models and Elite Model Management. At the age of eight years old she made her film debut in a minor role in Woody Allen's ''Oedipus Wrecks'', a short film that was released as one-third of the anthology ''New York Stories'' (1989). Soon after, she landed a small part in ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' (1990), as Tom Hanks's daughter. In 1993, Dunst played Hedril in "Dark Page," the seventh episode of the seventh season of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation''.

Critical success

The breakthrough role in Dunst's career came in ''Interview with the Vampire'', a 1994 film based on Anne Rice's novel, in which she played the child vampire Claudia, a surrogate daughter to Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt's characters in the film. The film received ambivalent reviews, but many film critics complimented Dunst's performance. Roger Ebert commented that Dunst's creation of the child vampire Claudia was one of the "creepier" aspects of the film, and mentioned her ability to convey the impression of great age inside apparent youth. Todd McCarthy in ''Variety'' noted that Dunst was "just right" for the family. The film featured a scene in which Dunst received her first kiss from Brad Pitt, who was 18 years her senior. In an interview with ''Interview'' magazine, she revealed, while questioned about her kissing scene with Pitt, that kissing him had made her feel uncomfortable: "I thought it was gross, that Brad had cooties. I mean, I was 10." Her performance earned her the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance, the Saturn Award for Best Young Actress, and her first Golden Globe Award nomination.

Later in 1994, Dunst appeared in the adaptation of the drama ''Little Women'' opposite Winona Ryder and Claire Danes. The film received favorable reviews. Critic Janet Maslin of ''The New York Times'' wrote that the film was the greatest adaptation of the novel and remarked on Dunst's performance, "The perfect contrast to take-charge Jo comes from Kirsten Dunst's scene-stealing Amy, whose vanity and twinkling mischief make so much more sense coming from an 11-year-old vixen than they did from grown-up Joan Bennett in 1933. Ms. Dunst, also scarily effective as the baby bloodsucker of ''Interview With the Vampire,'' is a little vamp with a big future."

In 1995, she appeared in the fantasy movie ''Jumanji'', loosely based on Chris Van Allsburg's 1981 book of the same name. The story is about a supernatural and ominous board game which makes animals and other jungle hazards appear upon each roll of the dice. She was part of an ensemble cast that included Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, and David Alan Grier. The movie grossed $262 million worldwide. That year, and again in 2002, she was named one of ''People'' magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. In 1996, Dunst had a recurring role in the third season of NBC's medical drama ''ER''. She portrayed a child prostitute, Charlie Chiemingo, taken under the guidance of Dr. Doug Ross, played by George Clooney. In 1997, she was the voice of Young Anastasia in the animated musical film ''Anastasia''. Also in 1997, Dunst appeared in the political satire ''Wag the Dog'', opposite Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. The following year she was the voice of the title character, Kiki, a 13-year-old apprentice witch who leaves her home village to spend a year on her own, in the anime movie ''Kiki's Delivery Service'' (1998).

Dunst was offered the role of Angela in the 1999 drama film ''American Beauty'', but turned it down because she did not want to appear in the film's suggestive sexual scenes or kiss co-star Kevin Spacey. She later explained: "When I read it, I was 15 and I don't think I was mature enough to understand the script's material." That same year, she appeared in the comedy ''Dick'', alongside Michelle Williams. The film is a parody retelling the events of the Watergate scandal which lead to the resignation of U.S. president Richard Nixon.

In Sofia Coppola's independent film ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1999), Dunst played the role of troubled adolescent Lux Lisbon. The film was screened as a special presentation at the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival in 2000. The movie received generally favorable reviews, and ''San Francisco Chronicle'' critic Peter Stack noted in his review that Dunst "beautifully balances innocence and wantonness."

In 2000, she played Torrance Shipman, the captain of a cheerleading squad in ''Bring It On''. The film generated mostly critical reviews, with Charles Taylor of Salon.com writing that the film had failed to provide Dunst with as good a role as she had either in ''Dick'' or in ''The Virgin Suicides.'' However, Jessica Winter of ''The Village Voice'' complimented Dunst, stating that her performance was "as sprightly and knowingly daft as her turn in ''Dick''. She provides the only major element of ''Bring It On'' that plays as tweaking parody rather than slick, strident, body-slam churlishness." The movie grossed $90 million worldwide.

The following year, Dunst had the lead in the teen comedy ''Get Over It'' (2001). She later explained that one of the reasons for accepting the role was that it gave her the opportunity to sing. Also in 2001, she depicted the late American actress Marion Davies in ''The Cat's Meow'', directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Derek Elley of ''Variety'' described the film as "playful and sporty," saying that this was Dunst's best performance to date: "Believable as both a spoiled ingenue and a lover to two very different men, Dunst endows a potentially lightweight character with considerable depth and sympathy." In the ''Esquire'' review, Tom Carson called her performance "terrific." For her work, she won the Best Actress Silver Ombú category award at the 2002 Mar del Plata Film Festival.

''Spider-Man'' and after

In the 2002 superhero film ''Spider-Man'', the most successful film of her career to date, Dunst played Mary Jane Watson, the best friend and love interest of the title character, played by Tobey Maguire. The film was directed by Sam Raimi. Owen Gleiberman of ''Entertainment Weekly'' remarked on Dunst's ability to "lend even the smallest line a tickle of flirtatious music." In the ''Los Angeles Times'' review, critic Kenneth Turan noted that Dunst and Maguire made a real connection on screen, concluding that their relationship involved audiences to an extent rarely seen in films. ''Spider-Man'' was a commercial and critical success. The movie grossed $114 million during its opening weekend in North America and went on to earn $822 million worldwide.

Following the success of ''Spider-Man'', Dunst appeared in the independent drama ''Levity'' (2003), where she had a supporting role. That same year she starred in ''Mona Lisa Smile'' (2003). She was part of an ensemble cast that included Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Julia Stiles. The film generated mostly negative reviews, with Manohla Dargis of the ''Los Angeles Times'' describing it as "smug and reductive." She next appeared in the supporting role of Mary Svevo in ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004), alongside Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, and Tom Wilkinson. The latter film received very positive reviews, with ''Entertainment Weekly'' describing Dunst's subplot as "nifty and clever." The movie grossed $72 million worldwide.

The success of the first ''Spider-Man'' film led Dunst to reprise the role in the 2004 sequel, ''Spider-Man 2''. The movie was well received by critics and a financial success, setting a new opening weekend box office record for North America. With revenue of $783 million worldwide, it was the second highest grossing film in 2004. Also in 2004, she portrayed a rising tennis player in the Wimbledon Championships opposite Paul Bettany, who played a fading former tennis star in the romantic comedy ''Wimbledon''. Reception for the movie was mixed, but many critics enjoyed Dunst's performance. Claudia Puig of ''USA Today'' reported that the chemistry between Dunst and Bettany was potent, with Dunst doing a fine job as a sassy and self-assured player.

In 2005, she appeared as flight attendant Claire Colburn alongside Orlando Bloom, in ''Elizabethtown'', a movie written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The film premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival. Dunst revealed that working with Crowe was enjoyable, but more demanding than she had expected. The movie garnered mixed reviews, with the ''Chicago Tribune'' rating it one out of four stars and describing Dunst's portrayal of a flight attendant as "cloying." It was a box office disappointment.

Dunst's next film role was the title character in the 2006 biographical film ''Marie Antoinette''. Adapted from Antonia Fraser's book ''Marie Antoinette: The Journey'', the film was Dunst's second with director Sofia Coppola. The movie was screened at a special presentation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and was reviewed favourably. International revenues were $45 million out of $60 million overall.

In 2007 she again played Mary Jane Watson, in ''Spider-Man 3''. In contrast to the previous two films' positive reviews, ''Spider-Man 3'' was met with a mixed reception by critics. Nonetheless, with a total worldwide gross of $891 million, it stands as the most commercially successful film in the series and Dunst's highest grossing film to the end of 2008. Having initially signed on for three ''Spider-Man'' films, she revealed that she would do a fourth, but only if Raimi and Maguire also returned. In January 2010 it was announced that the ''Spider-Man'' franchise would be restarted, thus dropping Dunst, Maguire, and Raimi from the film series.

In 2008, Dunst starred alongside Simon Pegg in ''How to Lose Friends and Alienate People'', an adaptation of the memoir of the same name by former ''Vanity Fair'' contributing editor Toby Young. After she signed on to the film, she revealed that she had joined the project because Pegg was scheduled to appear in it.

Since 2010, Dunst's work has included directing the short film ''Bastard'' which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010, and was later featured at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Her next role was in a leading role opposite Ryan Gosling in the romantic drama ''All Good Things'' (2010) in which she portrays a woman from a run-down neighborhood who goes missing. The feature received reasonable reviews, and earned $640 thousand worldwide. Dunst stars in Lars von Trier's science-fiction film ''Melancholia'' as a depressed woman at the end of the world. The film, which also stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Rampling premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Dunst won the Best Actress Award award for her performance.

Dunst has signed to appear in ''Sweet Relief'' as peace activist Marla Ruzicka, a U.S. relief worker killed by a suicide bomb in Baghdad. She has expressed interest in playing the role of Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry in Michel Gondry's upcoming biographical film about the band. Dunst is due to appear in Juan Diego Solanas' science fiction-romance film ''Upside Down'' co-starring Jim Sturgess. Dunst has also recently filmed the short film ''The Second Bakery Attack'' with Brian Geraghty.

Reports have also stated that she will join Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, and Garrett Hedlund in the upcoming feature, ''On the Road''. She will make a cameo appearance in the upcoming short feature ''Fight for Your Right Revisited''. It premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. As of August 2011, Dunst is filming independent comedy film, ''Bachelorette'', produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.

Music

Dunst made her singing debut in the 2001 film ''Get Over It'', performing two songs written by Marc Shaiman. She also lent her voice to the end credits of ''The Cat's Meow'', singing Henry Creamer and Turner Layton's jazz standard "After You've Gone." In ''Spider-Man 3'', she sings two songs as part of her role as Mary Jane Watson, one during a Broadway performance, and one as a singing waitress in a jazz club. Dunst revealed that she recorded the songs earlier and later lip-synced to it when filming began. She also appeared in the music video for Savage Garden's "I Knew I Loved You," and she sang two tracks, "This Old Machine" and "Summer Day", on Jason Schwartzman's 2007 solo album ''Nighttiming''. In an interview with ''The Advertiser'', Dunst explained that she has no plans to follow the steps of actors such as Russell Crowe or Toni Collette's in releasing an album, saying: "Definitely not. No way. It worked when Barbra Streisand was doing it, but now it's a little cheesy, I think. It works better when singers are in movies."

Dunst starred as the magical princess Majokko in the Takashi Murakami and McG directed short ''Akihabara Majokko Princess'' singing a cover of "Turning Japanese". This was shown at the "Pop Life" exhibition in London's Tate Modern museum. It shows Dunst prancing around Akihabara, a crowded shopping district in Tokyo. The exhibition was held from October 1, 2009 to January 17, 2010 in London.

Personal life

Dunst is not married and has not been identified with a long-term partner. She has reportedly been involved in short-term relationships with playwright Jeff Smeenge, actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and musician Johnny Borrell of Razorlight.

Dunst was treated for depression in early 2008 at the Cirque Lodge treatment center in Utah. She explained that she had been feeling low in the six months before her admittance. In late March she checked out of the treatment center and began filming ''All Good Things''. In May she went public with this information in order to highlight the struggle faced by so many other successful women and to dispel false rumors that had been very painful for her friends and family.

Activism

Politics

Dunst supported Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Four years later, she supported Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Dunst revealed that she supported Obama "from the beginning" of the presidential campaign. In support of this, she directed and narrated a documentary entitled ''Why Tuesday'', explaining the United States tradition of voting on Tuesdays. Dunst explained that Tuesday is "not a holiday, and [the United States is] one of the lowest democratic countries in voter turnout." She felt it important to "influence people in a positive way" to vote on November 4.

Charity work

Her charity work includes participation with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, in which she helped design and promote a necklace, for which all proceeds from sales went to the Glaser foundation. She also has helped with breast cancer awareness; in September 2008 she participated in the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, to help raise funds to accelerate cancer research. On December 5, 2009, she participated in the Teletón in Mexico, to help raise funds to treat cancer and children rehabilitation.

Filmography

+ Film
! Year	! Film	! Role	Notes
1989	''New York Stories''	Lisa's daughter	Uncredited
1990	''''	Campbell McCoy
1991	''High Strung''	Young Girl
1993	''Darkness Before Dawn''	Sandra Guard
1993		Kitten Margolis	Episode: "Dear Georgie"Episode: "The Land of the Lost Children"
1993	''Star Trek: The Next Generation''	Hedril	Episode: "Dark Page"
1994		Jolene
1994		Claudia
1994		Younger Amy March	Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting ActressNominated–Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actress
1995		Judy Shepherd
1996	'''' (aka''Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy'')	Sara Weaver	YoungStar Awards 1997: Best Performance by a Young Actress in a Made For TV Movie
1996		Young Resi Noth
1996	''Touched by an Angel''	Amy Ann McCoy
1996		Charlie Chiemingo	Episode: "Ghosts"Episode: "Union Station"Episode: "Homeless for the Holidays"Episode: "Night Shift"Episode: "Post Mortem"Episode: "One More for the Road"
1997	''''	Joyce Taylor
1997		Anna Petterson
1997			Voice
1997		Sondra	Episode: "The Hole"
1997	''Wag the Dog''	Tracy Limes
1997	''True Heart''	Bonnie
1998	''Stories from My Childhood''	Alice/Ivett	Episode: "The Snow Queen"Episode: "Alice and the Mystery of the Third"
1998	''Fifteen and Pregnant''	Tina Spangler	Television movie
1998	''Kiki's Delivery Service''	Kiki
1998	''Small Soldiers''	Christy Fimple
1998	''''	Verena von Stefan
1998	''''	Becky Thatcher	Voice
1999	''''	Hannah Stern	Television movie
1999	''''	Lux Lisbon
1999		Amber Atkins
1999		Betsy Jobs
2000	''Lover's Prayer''	Zinaida
2000	''''	Erin Randall
2000	''Luckytown''	Lidda Doyles
2000		Torrance Shipman
2000	''Deeply''	Silly
2001		Kelly Woods/Helena	Nominated–Teen Choice Award for Film—Choice Chemistry
2001	''Crazy/Beautiful''	Nicole Oakley
2001	''''	Marion Davies
2002			Sony Ericsson Empire Awards
2002	''[[Saturday Night Live''		Season 27 Episode 524
2003	''''		TV
2003		Sofia Mellinger
2003	''Kaena: The Prophecy''	Kaena	Voice
2003	''Mona Lisa Smile''	Betty Warren	Nominated–Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Sleazebag
2004	''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind''	Mary Svevo
2004	''Spider-Man 2''	Mary Jane Watson
2004		Lizzie Bradbury
2005		Claire Colburn
2006		Marie Antoinette	ShoWest Award for Female Star of the Year
2007	''Spider-Man 3''	Mary Jane Watson
2008		Alison Olsen
2010	''''	Nat	Short film
2010		Katie Marks
2011	''Fight for Your Right Revisited''	Metal Chick	Short film
2011		Justine
2012		Eve	''post-production''
2012		Camille	''post-production''
2012		Regan	''filming''

References

External links

Category:1982 births Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from New Jersey Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:American child actors Category:American female models Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Living people Category:People from Brick Township, New Jersey Category:People from Point Pleasant, New Jersey Category:Saturn Award winners

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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