Germans
Deutsche
 |
Martin Luther • Otto von Bismarck • Ludwig van Beethoven • Immanuel Kant • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johannes Gutenberg • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Johann Sebastian Bach • Richard Wagner • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Friedrich Schiller • Karl Marx • Brothers Grimm • Konrad Adenauer • Albrecht Dürer
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz • Karl Benz• Konrad Zuse • Marlene Dietrich • Max Planck
Claudia Schiffer • Albert Einstein • Johannes Kepler • Friedrich Nietzsche • Gisele Bündchen
Willy Brandt • Otto Hahn • Wernher von Braun • Catherine the Great • Carl Friedrich Gauss |
| Total population |
German Diaspora ca. 150 million[1]
|
| Regions with significant populations |
 Germany 75 million[2][3][4] |
|
|
| Languages |
|
German: High German (Upper German, Central German), Low German (see German dialects)
|
| Religion |
|
Roman Catholic, Protestant (chiefly Lutheran)
|
| Related ethnic groups |
|
Austrians, Swedes,[5] Norwegians,[5] Danes, Dutch, Icelanders, Swiss Germans, and 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.[6] Legally, Germans are citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.
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.[7] 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.
The German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc (from diot "people"), referring to the Germanic "language of the people". It is not clear 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.[8]
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.[9]
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 němьci (singular němьcь), 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.[10][11]
The Germans are a Germanic people, which as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages.[citation needed] From the multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) left a core territory that was to become Germany.
Germanic Kingdoms in Europe c. 500 A.D
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.
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.
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.[citation needed] 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 1866, the feud between Austria and Prussia finally came to an end. There were a few reasons behind this war. As German nationalism grew strongly inside of the German Confederation and neither of them could decide on how Germany was going to be unified into a nation-state, the Austrians were favouring the Greater Germany unification but were not willing to give up any of the German-speaking land inside of the Austrian Empire and take second place to Prussia, the Prussians on the other hand wanted to unify Germany as Little Germany primarily by the Kingdom of Prussia whilst excluding Austria. In the final battle of the German war (Battle of Königgrätz) the Prussians successfully defeated the Austrians and succeeded in creating the North German Confederation.[12]
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 in 1871 as a German nation-state, effectively excluding the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy and Liechtenstein. Integrating the Austrians nevertheless remained a strong desire for many people of Germany and Austria, 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.[13]
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.[14] This was, however, prevented by the Treaty of Versailles.
The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, attempted to unite all the people they claimed were "Germans" (Volksdeutsche) into one realm, including ethnic Germans in eastern Europe,[15] 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 Sudetenland, Austria,[citation needed] 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 separate nation from the German nation. Recent polls show that no more than 6% of the German-speaking Austrians consider themselves as "Germans".[16] An Austrian identity was vastly emphasized along with the "first-victim of Nazism theory."[17] Today over 80 percent of the Austrians see themselves as an independent nation.[18]
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.[19]
Approximately 2 million, just from the territories of the former Soviet Union, have resettled in Germany since the late 1980s.[20] 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.
Since 1990 Germany has become home to Europe's third-largest Jewish population. In 2004, twice as many Jews from former Soviet republics settled in Germany as in Israel, bringing the total inflow to more than 200,000 since 1991. Some Jews from the former Soviet Union are of mixed heritage.
In its State of World Population 2006 report, the United Nations Population Fund lists Germany with hosting the third-highest percentage of the main international migrants worldwide, about 5% or 10 million of all 191 million migrants.[21]
Main article:
Ethnic Germans
A depiction of a Germanic family, ca. 300 AD. Illustration from
Costumes of All Nations (1913).
German-Argentines at Multitud Crespo.
The German ethnic identity is complex, and has been described as forming a continuum of "Germanness" defined by factors such as language, appearance, family background, country of residence and country of origin.[22]
The German ethnicity is linked to the Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe.[23] The early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia.[24] By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe and southward into Celtic territory.[25] During antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at this time.[26] By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France.[27]
Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine.[28] Roman emperor Augustus in 12 BC ordered the conquest of the Germans, but the catastrophic Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest resulted in the Roman Empire abandoning its plans to completely conquer Germany.[29] Germanic peoples in Roman territory were culturally Romanized, and although much of Germany remained free of direct Roman rule, Rome deeply influenced the development of German society, especially the adoption of Christianity by the Germans who obtained it from the Romans.[30] The adoption of Christianity would later become a major influence in the development of a common German identity.[31] The first major public figure to speak of a German people in general, was the Roman figure Tacitus in his work Germania around 100 AD.[32] However an actual united German identity and ethnicity did not exist then, and it would take centuries of development of German culture until the concept of a German ethnicity began to become a popular identity.
The arrival of the Huns in Europe resulted in Hun conquest of large parts of Eastern Europe, the Huns initially were allies of the Roman Empire who fought against Germanic tribes, but later the Huns cooperated with the Germanic tribe of the Ostrogoths, and large numbers of Germans lived within the lands of the Hunnic Empire of Attila.[34] Attila had both Hunnic and Germanic families and prominent Germanic chiefs amongst his close entourage in Europe.[35] The Huns living in Germanic territories in Eastern Europe adopted an East Germanic language as their lingua franca.[36] A major part of Attila's army were Germans, during the Huns' campaign against the Roman Empire.[37] After Attila's unexpected death the Hun Empire collapsed with the Huns dissappearing as a people in Europe - who either escaped into Asia, or otherwise blended in amongst Europeans.[38]
The event of the Protestant Reformation and the politics that ensued has been cited as the origins of German identity that arose in response to the spread of a common German language and literature. Early German national culture was developed through literary and religious figures including Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The concept of a German nation was developed by German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder.. The popularity of German identity arose in the aftermath of the French Revolution[41]
Persons who speak German as their first language, look German and whose families have lived in Germany for generations are considered "most German", followed by categories of diminishing Germanness such as Aussiedler (people of German ancestry whose families have lived in Eastern Europe but who have returned to Germany), Restdeutsche (people living in lands that have historically belonged to Germany but which is currently outside of Germany), Auswanderer (people whose families have emigrated from Germany and who still speak German), German speakers in German speaking nations such as Austrians, and finally people of German emigrant background who no longer speak German.[42]
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.[43]
The native language of Germans is German, a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch, and sharing many similarities with the North Germanic or Scandinavian languages. Spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers,[44] German is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union.
West Germanic languages
Dutch (Low Franconian, West Germanic)
Low German (West Germanic)
Central German (High German, West Germanic)
Upper German (High German, West Germanic)
English (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic)
Frisian (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic)
North Germanic languages
East Scandinavian
West Scandinavian
Line dividing the North and West Germanic languages
Global distribution of native speakers of the German language:
| Country |
German speaking population (outside Europe)[46] |
| USA |
5,000,000 |
| Brazil |
3,000,000 |
| Argentina |
500,000 |
| Canada |
450,000[46] – 620,000[47] |
| Australia |
110,000 |
| South Africa |
75,000 (German expatriate citizens)[46] |
| Chile |
40,000 |
| Paraguay |
30,000 – 40,000 |
| Namibia |
30,000 (German expatriate citizens)[46] |
| Mexico |
10,000 |
| Venezuela |
10,000 |
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),[48] Argentina (German-Argentine) (1,5%[49] ~ 7,5% of the population)[50] and Chile (German-Chilean) (approx. 1% of the population).[51]
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.
German ancestry groups (light blue) as largest minority by county in the USA, 2000.
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 and people claiming German ancestry:
| Country |
German ancestry |
German citizens |
Comments |
| Germany |
66,420,000 |
75,000,000[2] |
see Demographics of Germany |
 United States |
50,000,000[52] |
|
see German American |
 Brazil |
5,000,000[53] |
|
see German Brazilian |
 Canada |
3,200,000[54] |
|
see Canadians of German ethnicity |
 South Africa |
1,200,000[55][56] |
|
see Afrikaner. Although studies show that between 30–40% of Afrikaners have German ancestry, due to intermarriage this figure is likely to be much higher. |
 Argentina |
600,000[57] |
|
see German-Argentine |
The  CIS (mainly  Russia and  Kazakhstan) |
1,000,000 |
600,000[58] |
see Germans in Russia, Germans of Kazakhstan, Volga Germans, Caucasus Germans |
 France |
1,000,000[59][60] |
|
predominant ethnic group of Alsace and Moselle; 970,000 with German dialects as mother tongue |
 Australia |
812,000[61] |
|
incl. 106,524 German-born. See German Australian |
 Italy (in South Tyrol) |
500,000[62][63] |
|
|
 Netherlands |
|
179,000[64] |
|
 United Kingdom |
262,000[65] (This figure includes children born to British Military personnel serving on British Military bases in Germany) |
92,000[66] |
see German migration to the United Kingdom |
 Spain |
255,000[67] |
|
German immigrants |
 Switzerland |
|
266,000[68] |
see German immigration to Switzerland |
 Poland |
153,000[69] |
|
mainly in Opole Voivodeship, see German minority in Poland. |
 Chile |
150,000 ~ 200,000[51] |
|
see German-Chilean |
 Peru |
180,000[70] |
|
see German Peruvian |
 Hungary |
120,344[71] |
|
see Germans of Hungary |
 Austria |
|
124,710[72] |
|
 Israel |
|
100,000[73] |
|
 Venezuela |
70,000 |
|
see German Venezuelan |
 Romania |
60,000[74] |
|
see Germans of Romania |
 Uruguay |
46,000 |
6,000[75] |
|
 Czech Republic |
40,000[76] |
|
see Germans in the Czech Republic |
 Bolivia |
40,000[77] |
|
German speaking Mennonites. See Ethnic Germans in Bolivia |
 Belgium |
38,366[78] |
|
excludes German-speaking ethnic Belgians |
 Norway |
37,000[79] |
|
|
 Ecuador |
33,000[80] |
|
|
|
 Namibia |
30,000[81] |
|
German Namibian |
 Dominican Republic |
25,000[82] |
|
|
 Denmark |
15,000–20,000[83] |
|
|
 Greece |
|
15,498[84] |
|
 Ireland |
11,797[85] |
|
|
 Slovakia |
5000–10,000[86] |
|
|
 Philippines |
6,400[87] |
|
see German settlement in the Philippines |
 Serbia |
3,900 |
|
see Germans of Serbia |
 Turkmenistan |
2,700[88] |
|
|
 Tajikistan |
2,700[88] |
|
 Jamaica |
160[89] |
|
Germans in Jamaica |
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.
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.[90]
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 electronic computer.[91] 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.[92][93]
The work of David Hilbert and Max Planck was crucial to the foundation of modern physics, which Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger developed further.[94] 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.[95] The Walhalla temple for "laudable and distinguished Germans", features a number of scientists, and is located east of Regensburg, in Bavaria.[96][97]
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 2008[update], Germany is the fourth largest music market in the world[98] 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.[99] 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.[100]
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.[101]
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.
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 [102] (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[citation needed]). 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.[103]
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).
The
Allianz Arena, one of the world's most modern football stadiums.
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.[104] 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.[104] It also attracts the greatest audience, with hundreds of thousands of spectators attending Bundesliga matches and millions more watching on television.
Other popular sports include handball, volleyball, basketball, and ice hockey.[104] Germany has historically been one of the strongest contenders in the Olympic Games. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Germany finished fifth overall,[105] whereas in the 2006 Winter Olympics Germany finished first.[106]
Cultural map of the world according to the
World Values Survey, describing Germany as high in "Rational-Secular Values" and average-high in "Self-Expression values".
Germany is a modern, advanced society, shaped by a plurality of lifestyles and regional identities.[107] The country has established a high level of gender equality, promotes disability rights, and is legally and socially tolerant towards homosexuals. Gays and lesbians can legally adopt their partner's biological children, and civil unions have been permitted since 2001.[108] The Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle and the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, are openly gay.[109][dated info]
During the last decade of the 20th century, Germany changed its attitude towards immigrants. Until the mid-1990s the opinion was widespread that Germany is not a country of immigration, even though about 20% of the population were of non-German origin. Today the government and a majority of the German society are acknowledging that immigrants from diverse ethnocultural backgrounds are part of the German society and that controlled immigration should be initiated based on qualification standards.[110]
Since the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the internal and external evaluation of Germany's national image has changed.[111] In the annual Nation Brands Index global survey, Germany became significantly and repeatedly more highly ranked after the tournament. People in 20 different states assessed the country's reputation in terms of culture, politics, exports, its people and its attractiveness to tourists, immigrants and investments. Germany has been named the world's second most valued nation among 50 countries in 2010.[112] Another global opinion poll, for the BBC, revealed that Germany is recognised for the most positive influence in the world in 2010. A majority of 59% have a positive view of the country, while 14% have a negative view.[113][114]
With an expenditure of €67 billion on international travel in 2008, Germans spent more money on travel than any other country. The most visited destinations were Spain, Italy and Austria.[115]
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.
German language area in 1910–11, the boundaries of states are in red.
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.[116]
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" (German: Deutschösterreich). 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.[117]
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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to the reunification of East and West Germany.
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.
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.[118] 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.
A study in 2009, in which some 2,000 German citizens age 14 and upwards filled out a questionnaire. Nearly 60% of those surveyed shared the sentiment “I’m proud to be German.” And 78%, if free to choose their nation, would opt for German nationality with “near or absolute certainty”. [119]
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- ^ Germans and foreigners with an immigrant background. 156 is the estimate which counts all people claiming ethnic German ancestry in the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere.
- ^ a b 66.42 million is the number of Germans without immigrant background, 75 million is the number of German citizens Germans and foreigners with an immigrant background
- ^ "Deutsche Welle: 2005 German Census figures". Dw-world.de. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2046121,00.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "CIA World Factbook – Germany: People". Cia.gov. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gm.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ a b http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/EJHG_2002_v10_521-529.pdf
- ^ alongside the slightly earlier term Almayns; John of Trevisa's 1387 translation of Ranulf Higdon's Polychronicon has: Þe empere passede from þe Grees to þe Frenschemen and to þe Germans, þat beeþ Almayns. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Dutch was the adjective used in the sense "pertaining to Germans". Use of German as an adjective dates to ca. 1550. The adjective Dutch narrowed its sense to "of the Netherlands" during the 17th century.
- ^ (Spanish) Hablantes del alemán en el mundo
- ^ e.g. Walther von der Vogelweide. See Lexer, Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch (1872–1878), s.v. "Diutsche". The Middle High German Song of Roland (ca. 1170) has in diutisker erde (65.6) for "in the German realm, in Germany". The phrase in tütschem land, whence the modern Deutschland, is attested in the late 15th century (e.g. Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg, Ship of Fools, see Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, s.v. "Deutsch").
- ^ OED, s.v. [1] "Dutch, adj., n., and adv."
- ^ Schulze, Hagen (1998). Germany: A New History. Harvard University Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-674-80688-3.
- ^ "German", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Ed. T. F. Hoad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 4 March 2008.
- ^ http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/sierra/sevenweeks1866.htm
- ^ "US Census Factfinder". http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-_lang=en&-_caller=geoselect&-format=.
- ^ Ihre Meinung. "Als Vorarlberg Schweizer Kanton werden wollte – Vorarlberg – Aktuelle Nachrichten – Vorarlberg Online". Vol.at. http://www.vol.at/news/vorarlberg/artikel/als-vorarlberg-schweizer-kanton-werden-wollte/cn/news-20081023-08253040. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/the-nazi-concept-of-volksdeutsche-and-the-exacerbation-of-anti-AM60h08D5M
- ^ [2]. Development of the Austrian identity
- ^ Peter Utgaard, Remembering and Forgetting Nazism, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 188–189. Frederick C. Engelmann, "The Austro-German Relationship: One Language, One and One-Half Histories, Two States", Unequal Partners, ed. Harald von Riekhoff and Hanspeter Neuhold (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993), 53–54.
- ^ Redaktion (13 March 2008). "Österreicher fühlen sich heute als Nation – 1938 – derStandard.at " Wissenschaft". Derstandard.at. http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3261105. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "Fewer Ethnic Germans Immigrating to Ancestral Homeland". Migrationinformation.org. http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=201. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "External causes of death in a cohort of Aussiedler from the former Soviet Union, 1990–2002". Egms.de. http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/gmds2005/05gmds163.shtml. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ United Nations Population Fund: State of World Population 2006
- ^ Forsythe, Diana. 1989. German identity and the problem of history. History and ethnicity, p.143
- ^ World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Pp. 311.
- ^ World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Pp. 311.
- ^ World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Pp. 311.
- ^ Yehuda Cohen. The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust. SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2010. Pp. 27.
- ^ Yehuda Cohen. The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust. SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2010. Pp. 27.
- ^ World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Pp. 311-312.
- ^ World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Pp. 311.
- ^ World and Its Peoples. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Pp. 311-312.
- ^ Yehuda Cohen. The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust. SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS, 2010. Pp. 27.
- ^ Jeffrey E. Cole. Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Pp. 172.
- ^ A History of the Ostrogoths. Pp. 46.
- ^ A History of the Ostrogoths. Pp. 46.
- ^ Sinor, Denis. 1990. The Hun period. In D. Sinor, ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 177-205.
- ^ Jane Penrose. Rome and Her Enemies: An Empire Created and Destroyed by War The Germans and the Romans. Cambridge, England, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2008. Pp. 288.
- ^ Brian A. Pavlac. A Concise Survey of Western Civilization: Supremacies and Diversities Throughout History. Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Pp. 102.
- ^ Jeffrey E. Cole. Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Pp. 172.
- ^ Forsythe, Diana. 1989. German identity and the problem of history. History and ethnicity, p.146
- ^ "World Haplogroups Maps" (PDF). http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "Most Widely Spoken Languages". .ignatius.edu. 28 May 2011. http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "Ethnologue: East Middle German". http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=1205-16. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
- ^ a b c d Handwörterbuch des politischen Systems der Bundesrepublik (in German). Source lists "German expatriate citizens" only for Namibia and South Africa!
- ^ "Statistics Canada 2006". 2.statcan.ca. 6 January 2010. http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/topics/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?ALEVEL=3&APATH=3&CATNO=&DETAIL=0&DIM=&DS=99&FL=0&FREE=0&GAL=0&GC=99&GK=NA&GRP=1&IPS=&METH=0&ORDER=1&PID=89189&PTYPE=88971&RL=0&S=1&ShowAll=No&StartRow=1&SUB=705&Temporal=2006&Theme=70&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=&GID=837928. Retrieved 15 March 2010.
- ^ "A Imigração Alemã| Brasil | Deutsche Welle | 14.01.2010". Passeiweb.com. 6 January 1990. http://www.passeiweb.com/na_ponta_lingua/sala_de_aula/geografia/geografia_do_brasil/demografia_imigracoes/brasil_imigracoes_alemanha. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "Obsevatorio de Colectividades – Comunidad Alemana". Buenosaires.gob.ar. http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/areas/secretaria_gral/colectividades/?col=1. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ German-Argentine Descendants of Germans in Argentina
- ^ a b Oliver Zoellner. "Oliver Zoellner | Generating Samples of Ethnic Minorities in Chile". Research-worldwide.de. http://www.research-worldwide.de/article-chile2005.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ 49.2 million German Americans as of 2005 according to the "US demographic census". http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/IPTable?_bm=y&-reg=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201:535;ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201PR:535;ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201T:535;ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201TPR:535&-qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201&-qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201PR&-qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201T&-qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0201TPR&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-TABLE_NAMEX=&-ci_type=A&-redoLog=false&-charIterations=047&-geo_id=01000US&-format=&-_lang=en. Retrieved 2 August 2007. ; see also Languages in the United States#German.
- ^ "A Imigração Alemã no Brasil | Brasil | Deutsche Welle | 25.07.2004". Passeiweb.com. 6 January 1990. http://www.passeiweb.com/na_ponta_lingua/sala_de_aula/geografia/geografia_do_brasil/demografia_imigracoes/brasil_imigracoes_alemanha. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ 2001 Canadian Census gives 2,742,765 total respondents stating their ethnic origin as partly German, with 705,600 stating "single-ancestry", see List of Canadians by ethnicity.
- ^ "Germans in South Africa". Webcitation.org. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/meadows/7589/intro_en.html&date=2009-10-25+10:34:36. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ Professor JA Heese in his book Die Herkoms van die Afrikaner (The Origins of Afrikaners) claims the modern Afrikaners (who total around 3.5 million) have 34.4% German heritage. How 'Pure' was the Average Afrikaner?
- ^ [3]~3,000,000 Including Volga Germans, and other German ancestries
- ^ 597,212 in Russia as of 2002, 0.4 of Russian population
- ^ Vladimir Geroimenko. "France". Ling.gu.se. http://www.ling.gu.se/projekt/sprakfrageladan/english/varldskarta/eng-fra.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "Alsatians". Everyculture.com. 16 January 2010. http://www.everyculture.com/Europe/Alsatians.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ The Australian Bureau of StatisticsPDF (424 KB) reports 742,212 people of German ancestry in the 2001 Census. German is spoken by ca. 135,000 [4], about 105,000 of them Germany-born, see Demographics of Australia
- ^ http://demo.istat.it/str2006/query.php?lingua=ita&Rip=S0&paese=A11&submit=Tavola
- ^ South Tyrol in figures. Provincial Statistics Institute.
- ^ 378,947 (2010, 2.3% of Dutch population). cbs.nl
- ^ German born only; Born Abroad: An Immigration map of Britain: Germany, 2001
- ^ 2008, 0.15% of UK population. statistics.gov.uk
- ^ "INE(2006)". INE. http://www.ine.com. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ 265,944 (2009, 3.3% of Swiss population) Wohnbevölkerung nach detaillierter Staatsangehörigkeit, Swiss Federal Statistical Office. 163 923 resident aliens (nationals or citizens) in 2004 (2.2% of total population), compared to 112 348 as of 2000. 2005 report of the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics. 4.6 million including Alemannic Swiss: CIA World Fact Book, identifies the 65% (4.9 million) Swiss German speakers as "ethnic Germans".
- ^ 2002 census
- ^ (Spanish) / Inmigración Alemana al Perú
- ^ census 2001[dead link]
- ^ 2008, 1.5% of Austrian population. Wer sind die Deutschen in Österreich?
- ^ "Money overcomes ideology as Israelis hunt down German passports| Yediot Ahronot | 31.05.2011". Ynetnews.com. 20 June 1995. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4076384,00.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "German minority" (in (German)). Auswaertiges-amt.de. http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/en/Laender/Rumaenien.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "There are 6,000 Germans living in Uruguay today and 40,000 descendants of Germans" (in (German)). Auswaertiges-amt.de. http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/es/Laenderinformationen/01-Laender/Uruguay.html. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ "Ethnic German Minorities in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia". Radio.cz. http://www.radio.cz/en/article/27184. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- ^ Romero, Simon (21 December 2006). "Land reform worries Bolivia's Mennonites". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/21/news/bolivia.php. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
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- ^ Norway[dead link]
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- ^ "Amid Namibia's White Opulence, Majority Rule Isn't So Scary Now". New York Times. 26 December 1988. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2D71E3CF935A15751C1A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
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- ^ in the German-Danish border region; see Bund Deutscher Nordschleswiger
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- ^ Out Of Many Cultures The People Who Came The Arrival Of The GERMANS "The Arrival Of The GERMANS". Jamaica Gleaner. 02 March 2004. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0060.htm Out Of Many Cultures The People Who Came The Arrival Of The GERMANS. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
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- ^ National Identity - Where Germans dare Pressop
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