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• 
  

• 
  Alsace
  Alsace (French: Alsace [alzas]; Alsatian: Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass, pre-1996: Elsaß, IPA: [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area (8,280 km²), and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km² (total population in 2006: 1,815,488; 1 January 2008 estimate: 1,836,000). Alsace is located on France's eastern border and on the west bank of the upper Rhine adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. The political, economic and cultural capital as well as largest city of Alsace is Strasbourg. Because that city is the seat of dozens of international organizations and bodies, Alsace is politically one of the most important regions in the European Union.
  The name "Alsace" can be traced back to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation derives it from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. The region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was gradually annexed by France in the 17th century under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV and made one of the provinces of France. Alsace is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Lorraine, because German possession of parts of these two régions (as the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918) was contested in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years.
  
  wn.com/Alsace
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  Asturias
  Asturias (English /əˈstʊriəs/, /əˈstjʊəriəs/, /ɑːˈstʊərjəs/), officially the Principality of Asturias (Spanish: Principado de Asturias [pɾinθiˈpaðo ðe asˈtuɾjas]; Asturian: Principáu d'Asturies [pɾinθiˈpaw ðasˈtuɾjes]), is an autonomous community of Spain. It is coextensive with the province of Asturias, and contains nearly all of the territory that was part of the Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages. The autonomous community of Asturias is bordered by Cantabria to the east, by Castile and León to the south, by Galicia to the west, and by the Bay of Biscay to the north.
  The most important cities are the communal capital, Oviedo (Uviéu), the seaport and largest city Gijón (Xixón), and the industrial town of Avilés. Other popular municipalities include Cangas de Onís (Cangues d'Onís), Cangas del Narcea, Gozón, Grado (Grau), Langreo (Llangréu), Laviana (Llaviana), Lena (Ḷḷena), Llanes, Mieres, Siero, Valdés, Vegadeo (A Veiga) and Villaviciosa (see also List of municipalities and comarcas in Asturias).
  
  wn.com/Asturias
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  Baden-Württemberg
  Baden-Württemberg (German pronunciation: [ˈbaːdən ˈvʏɐ̯təmˌbɛɐ̯k]) is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of 35,742 square kilometres (13,800 sq mi) and 10.7 million inhabitants. The state capital is Stuttgart.
  The sobriquet Ländle (dialect form for "small land") is sometimes used as a synonym for the Swabian part of Baden-Württemberg.^{[citation needed]}
  The area used to be covered by the historical states of Baden, including the former Prussian Hohenzollern, and Württemberg, part of the region of Swabia.
  Württemberg was occupied by the Romans in the first century AD who defended their position there by constructing a (limes) rampart. Early on in the third century, the Alemanni drove the Romans beyond the Rhine and the Danube, but in their turn they succumbed to the Franks under Clovis I, the decisive battle taking place in 496. It later became part of the Holy Roman Empire.
  
  wn.com/Baden-Württemberg
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  Battle of Tolbiac
  Coordinates: 50°40′31″N 6°36′4″E / 50.67528°N 6.60111°E / 50.67528; 6.60111
  The Battle of Tolbiac was fought between the Franks under Clovis I and the Alamanni, traditionally set in 496. The site of "Tolbiac", or "Tulpiacum" is usually given as Zülpich, North Rhine-Westphalia, about 60km east of the present German-Belgian frontier, which is not implausible. The Franks were successful at Tolbiac and established their hegemony over the Alamanni.
  Gregory of Tours first inserted the thematic element that has shaped subsequent interpretations of Tolbiac as a climacteric in the course of European history: Clovis is said to have attributed his success to a vow that he had made: if he won, he would convert to the religion of the Christian God who had aided him. He became a Christian in a ceremony at Reims at Christmas 496; the traditional date of the battle of Tolbiac has been established to accord with this firmly attested baptismal date, by accepting as literal truth Gregory's account which has a clear parallel with the conversion of Constantine I, connected by Lactantius with the equally conclusive Battle of the Milvian Bridge. A surviving letter from Avitus of Vienne, congratulating Clovis on his baptism, makes no mention of the supposed recent battlefield conversion.
  
  wn.com/Battle_of_Tolbiac
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  Bavaria
  Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria (German: Freistaat Bayern, pronounced [ˈfʁaɪʃtaːt ˈbaɪ.ɐn] ( listen)), is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of 70,548 square kilometres (27,200 sq mi), it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany. Bavaria is Germany's second most populous state (after North Rhine-Westphalia), with 12.5 million inhabitants, more than any of the three sovereign states on its borders. Bavaria's capital is Munich.
  One of the oldest states of Europe, it was established as a duchy in the mid first millennium. In the 17th century, the Duke of Bavaria became a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. The Kingdom of Bavaria existed from 1806 to 1918, and Bavaria has since been a free state (republic). Modern Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia and Swabia.
  The Bavarians emerged in a region north of the Alps, originally inhabited by the Gauls, which had been part of the Roman provinces of Raetia and Noricum. The Bavarians spoke Old High German but, unlike other Germanic groups, probably did not migrate from elsewhere. Rather, they seem to have coalesced out of other groups left behind by Roman withdrawal late in the 5th century. These peoples may have included the Celtic Boii, some remaining Romans, Marcomanni, Allemanni, Quadi, Thuringians, Goths, Scirians, Rugians, Heruli. The name "Bavarian" ("Baiuvarii") means "Men of Baia" which may indicate Bohemia, the homeland of the Celtic Boii and later of the Marcomanni. They first appear in written sources c. 520. Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early-8th century. Bavaria was, for the most part, unaffected by the Protestant Reformation.
  
  wn.com/Bavaria
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  Bavarian Swabia
  Swabia (German: Schwaben) is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany.
  Swabia is located in southwest Bavaria. It was formed out of the part of the historic region of Swabia which was annexed by Bavaria in 1803. It was once formally ruled by dukes of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. During the Nazi period, the area was separated from the rest of Bavaria to become the Gau Swabia. It was re-incorporated into Bavaria after the war.
  The Regierungsbezirk is subdivided into 3 regions (Planungsregionen): Allgäu, Augsburg, and Donau-Iller. Donau-Iller also includes two districts and one city of Baden-Württemberg.
  * Part of the Swabian Keuper Land
  Historical Population of Swabia:
  The Bavarian administrative region of Swabia is the eastern part of the duchy of Swabia. Already after the execution of the Swabian duke Conradin in Naples in 1268, his uncle, the Bavarian duke Louis inherited some of Conradin's possessions in Swabia. In 1803 with the German Mediatisation Bavaria acquired the further East Swabian territories which were merged with Palatinate-Neuburg under the old name Swabia which was introduced in 1837 by king Ludwig I of Bavaria. In 1945 Lindau was divested by France, but reunited with Swabia in 1955. In 1972 the former Swabian city Neuburg an der Donau was reunited with Upper Bavaria.
  
  wn.com/Bavarian_Swabia
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  Bessarabia
  Bessarabia (Romanian: Basarabia; Russian: Бессарабия Bessarabiya, Ukrainian: Бессарабія Bessarabiya) is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west.
  In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812, and ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern portion of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, was ceded to Imperial Russia and designated "Bessarabia". While this eastern part became the Governorate of Bessarabia, the western part of Moldavia united, in 1859, with Wallachia in what would become the Kingdom of Romania. For a short period between 1856 and 1878, two of the nine traditional counties of Bessarabia were also part of Moldavia and then Romania.
  Three months after declaring its independence from Russia, in 1918, as the Moldavian Democratic Republic (shortly before the end of World War I); it united with the Kingdom of Romania. In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. Subsequently, Romania joined the Axis Powers and recaptured it in 1941 and lost again in 1944. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border set along the Prut River was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. The core part of Bessarabia was joined with parts of the Moldavian ASSR (Transnistria) to form the Moldavian SSR. At the same time, smaller parts of Bessarabia, in the south (two traditional counties; Budjak) and north (half of one county), were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR.
  
  wn.com/Bessarabia
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  Braga
  Braga (Portuguese pronunciation: ['b?a??]), is a city in the municipality of Braga in northwestern Portuguese district of Braga, considered the oldest Christian archdiocese in the country and one of the oldest in the world. Under the Roman Empire, known as Bracara Augusta, the settlement was centre of the province of Gallaecia.
  With a total urban population of 175,063 inhabitants, Braga is the third-largest city in Portugal (after Lisbon and Porto), including the city and suburban parishes; the municipality, which includes 62 parishes, has a population in 2011 of approximately 181,819 inhabitants (the seventh largest municipality in Portugal by population). Its agglomerated urban area extends from the Cavado River to the Easte River. Braga is also the seat of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Minho, which includes a population of 826,833 (2007 statistics), considered one of the fastest growing urban areas in the European Union.^{[citation needed]}
  In 2012, the city was awarded with the title European Youth Capital 2012.
  
  wn.com/Braga
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  Brazil
  Brazil ⁱ/brəˈzɪl/ (Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil,  listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.
  Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It is bordered on the north by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French overseas region of French Guiana; on the northwest by Colombia; on the west by Bolivia and Peru; on the southwest by Argentina and Paraguay and on the south by Uruguay. Numerous archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz. It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile.
  Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal.Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.
  
  wn.com/Brazil
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  Canada
  Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
  The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
  
  wn.com/Canada
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  Croatia
  Croatia (ⁱ/kroʊˈeɪʃə/ kroh-AY-shə; Croatian: Hrvatska pronounced [xř̩ʋaːtskaː]), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska  listen (help·info)), is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers 56,594 square kilometres (21,851 square miles) and has diverse, mostly continental and Mediterranean climates. Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast contains more than a thousand islands. The country's population is 4.29 million, most of whom are Croats, with the most common religious denomination being Roman Catholicism.
  In the early 7th century the Croats arrived in area of present-day Croatia. They organised the state into two dukedoms by the 9th century. Tomislav became the first king by 925 AD, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom. The Kingdom of Croatia retained its sovereignty for nearly two centuries, reaching its peak during the rule of Kings Peter Krešimir IV and Dmitar Zvonimir. Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of the House of Habsburg to the Croatian throne. In 1918, after World War I, Croatia was included in the short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs that declared independence from Austria–Hungary and co-founded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. A Croatian state briefly existed during World War II as a fascist puppet state. After the war, Croatia became a founding member and a federal constituent of the Second Yugoslavia, a socialist state. In June 1991, Croatia declared independence, which came into effect on 8 October of the same year. The Croatian War of Independence was fought successfully during the four years following the declaration.
  
  wn.com/Croatia
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  England
  England ⁱ/ˈɪŋɡlənd/ is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, while the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separate it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
  The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world. The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law—the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world—developed in England, and the country's parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's Royal Society laid the foundations of modern experimental science.
  
  wn.com/England
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  Galicia (Spain)
  Galicia (English ⁱ/ɡəˈlɪsiə/, /ɡəˈlɪʃə/; Galician: [ɡaˈliθja]; Spanish: [ɡaˈliθja]) is an autonomous community in northwest Spain, with the official status of a nationality of Spain.
  Its component provinces are A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra. It is bordered by Portugal to the south, the Spanish autonomous communities of Castile and León and Asturias to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Bay of Biscay to the north. Besides its continental territory, Galicia includes Arousa Island, and the archipelagos of Cíes, Ons, Sálvora Island, Cortegada Island, Malveiras Islands, Sisargas Islands, and other minor isles and islets.
  Galicia has roughly 2.79 million inhabitants as of 2011, with the largest concentration in two coastal areas, from Ferrol to A Coruña in the north-west, and from Vilagarcía to Vigo in the south-west. The capital is Santiago de Compostela, in the province of A Coruña. Vigo, in the province of Pontevedra, is the most populous municipality with 297,332 inhabitants and the second most populous city with 206,411 habitants; while A Coruña is the most populous city with 220,581 habitants and the second most populous municipality with 246,056 habitants in its municipality (INE 2009). Both cities are the cores of the two major metropolitan areas of Galicia.
  
  wn.com/Galicia_(Spain)
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  Germany
  Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
  A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
  
  wn.com/Germany
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  Hungary
  Hungary ⁱ/ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)) is a country, which is located in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital, and largest city, is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
  Following a Celt (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (AD 9 - c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian prince Árpád, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned with a crown sent by the pope from Rome in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centres of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867–1918).
  
  wn.com/Hungary
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  Iberian Peninsula
  The Iberian Peninsula (Asturian, Galician, Leonese, Mirandese, Portuguese and Spanish: Península Ibérica, Catalan: Península Ibèrica, Aragonese and Occitan: Peninsula Iberica, French: Péninsule Ibérique, Basque: Iberiar Penintsula), sometimes called Iberia, is a peninsula located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. It is bordered on the southeast and east by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the north, west and southwest by the Atlantic Ocean. The Pyrenees form the northeast edge of the peninsula, separating it from the rest of Europe. In the south, it approaches the northern coast of Africa. It is the second-largest peninsula in Europe, with an area of approximately 582,000 km² (225,000 sq mi).
  The English word Iberia was adapted from the use of the Ancient Greek word Ιβηρία (Ibēría) by the Greek geographers under the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. At that time the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabo's Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass south-west (he named it "west") of there.
  
  wn.com/Iberian_Peninsula
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  Kazakhstan
  Kazakhstan (ⁱ/ˌkɑːzəkˈstɑːn/ or /ˌkæzəkˈstæn/) (Kazakh: Қазақстан, Qazaqstan, pronounced [qɑzɑqstɑ́n]; Russian: Казахстан [kəzɐxˈstan]), officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Europe. The ninth largest country in the world by land area, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of 2,727,300 square kilometres (1,053,000 sq mi) is larger than Western Europe. It is neighbored clockwise from the north by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and also borders on a significant part of the Caspian Sea. Although Kazakhstan does not share a border with Mongolia, its most easterly point is only 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Mongolia's western tip. The terrain of Kazakhstan ranges from flatlands, steppes, taigas, rock-canyons, hills, deltas, and snow-capped mountains to deserts. With 16.6 million people (2011 estimate) Kazakhstan has the 62nd largest population in the world, though its population density is less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 per sq. mi.). The capital was moved in 1998 from Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, to Astana.
  
  wn.com/Kazakhstan
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  Lake Constance
  Lake Constance (German: Bodensee) is a lake on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps, and consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee ("upper lake"), the Untersee ("lower lake"), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein.
  The lake is situated in Germany, Switzerland and Austria near the Alps. Specifically, its shorelines lie in the German federal-states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the Austrian federal-state of Vorarlberg, and the Swiss cantons of Thurgau and St. Gallen. The Rhine flows into it from the south following the Austro-Swiss frontier.
  Lake Constance was first mentioned by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela about 43AD. He noted that the Rhine flows through two lakes, and gave them the Latin names Lacus Venetus (Obersee) and Lacus Acronius (Untersee). Pliny the Elder used the name Lacus Brigantinus, after the Roman city of Brigantium (today Bregenz). The lake is also colloquially known as the Swabian Sea (das schwäbische Meer).
  The freshwater lake sits at 395 m (1,296 ft) above sea level and is Central Europe's third largest, after Lake Balaton and Lake Geneva. It is 63 km (39 mi) long, and at its widest point, nearly 14 km (8.7 mi). It covers approximately 571 km² (220 sq mi) of total area. The greatest depth is 252 metres (827 ft) in the middle of the eastern part (Obersee). Its volume is approximately 1e10 m³ (1.3×10¹⁰ cu yd). The lake has four parts: the main section, called Obersee, 476 km (0.184 sq mi); the north section, Überlinger See, 61 km² (24 sq mi); the west section, Untersee, 63 km² (24 sq mi); and the northwest section, the Zeller See and Gnadensee. The regulated Rhine flows into the lake in the southeast, through the Obersee, the city of Konstanz and the Untersee and flows out near Stein am Rhein. Lake Constance provides fresh water to many cities in south Germany.
  
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  León (province)
  León (Leonese: Llión) is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northwestern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León.
  About one quarter of its population of 500,200 (2008) lives in the capital, León. The weather is cold and dry during the winter.^[vague]
  There are Roman Catholic cathedrals at León and Astorga. The province shares the Picos de Europa National Park (in the Picos de Europa mountain range) with Cantabria and Asturias. It has 211 municipalities.
  The province of León was established in 1833 with the new Spanish administrative organisation into regions and provinces instead of Kingdoms. The Leonese Region was composed of the provinces of León, Salamanca and Zamora.
  Until 1833, the independently administered Kingdom of León, situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula, retained the status of a kingdom, although dynastic union had brought it into the Crown of Castile. The Kingdom of León was founded in 910 A.D. when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their main seat from Oviedo to the city of León. The Atlantic provinces became the Kingdom of Portugal in 1139, and the eastern, inland part of the kingdom was joined dynastically to the Kingdom of Castile first in 1037–1065, again 1077–1109 and 1126–1157, 1230–1296 and from 1301 onward. (See Castile and León#Historic union of the Kingdoms of Castile and León.) León retained the status of a kingdom until 1833, being composed by Adelantamientos Mayores, where Leonese Adelantamiento consisted of the territories between the Picos de Europa and the Duero river.
  
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  Liechtenstein
  Liechtenstein, officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (ⁱ/ˈlɪktənstaɪn/ LIK-tən-styn; German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein, German pronunciation: [ˈfʏʁstn̩tuːm ˈlɪçtn̩ʃtaɪn]) is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over 160 square kilometres (62 sq mi), and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan. Liechtenstein has the highest gross domestic product per person in the world when adjusted by purchasing power parity, and has the world's lowest external debt. Liechtenstein also has the second lowest unemployment rate in the world at 1.5% (Monaco is first).
  Liechtenstein is the smallest yet the richest (by measure of GDP per capita) German-speaking country in the world and the only country to lie entirely within the Alps. It is known as a principality as it is a constitutional monarchy headed by a prince. Liechtenstein is divided into 11 municipalities. Much of its terrain is mountainous, making it a winter sports destination. Many cultivated fields and small farms characterize its landscape both in the south (Oberland, upper land) and in the north (Unterland, lower land). The country has a strong financial sector located in the capital, Vaduz, and has been identified as a tax haven. It is a member of the European Free Trade Association and part of the European Economic Area, the Schengen Area but not of the European Union.
  
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  Montenegro
  Montenegro (ⁱ/ˌmɒntɨˈneɪɡroʊ/ or /ˌmɒntɨˈniːɡroʊ/; or /ˌmɒntɨˈnɛɡroʊ/; Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора [tsr̩̂ːnaː ɡɔ̌ra] ( listen), meaning "Black Mountain") is a country in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the southeast. Its capital and largest city is Podgorica, while Cetinje is designated as the Prijestonica (Пријестоница), meaning the former Royal Capital City.
  In the 10th century, there existed three Slavic principalities on the territory of Montenegro: Duklja, roughly corresponding to the southern half, Travunia, the west, and Rascia, the north. In 1042, archon Stefan Vojislav led a revolt that resulted in independence of Duklja and the establishment of the Vojislavljević dynasty. Duklja reached its zenith under Vojislav's son, Mihailo (1046–81), and his son Bodin (1081–1101). By the 13th century, Zeta had replaced Duklja when referring to the realm, which at the time was part of the Serbian Grand Principality of the Nemanjić dynasty.
  
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  New Swabia
  New Swabia (German: Neuschwabenland) is a cartographic name sometimes given to an area of Antarctica between 20°E and 10°W in Queen Maud Land, which within Norway is administered as a Norwegian dependent territory under the Antarctic Treaty System. New Swabia was explored by Germany in early 1939 and named after that expedition's ship, the Schwabenland, itself named after the German region of Swabia.
  Like many other countries, Germany sent expeditions to the Antarctic region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of which were scientific. The late 19th century expeditions to the Southern Ocean, South Georgia, the Kerguelen Islands, and the Crozet Islands were astronomical, meteorological, and hydrological, mostly in close collaboration with scientific teams from other countries. As the 19th century ended Germany began to focus on Antarctica.
  The first German expedition to Antarctica was the Gauss expedition from 1901 to 1903. Led by Arctic veteran and geology professor Erich von Drygalski, this was the first expedition to use a hot-air balloon in Antarctica. It also found and named Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. The second German Antarctic expedition (1911–1912) was led by Wilhelm Filchner with a goal of crossing Antarctica to learn if it was one piece of land. As happened with other such early attempts, the crossing failed before it even began. The expedition discovered and named the Luitpold Coast and the Filchner Ice Shelf. A German whaling fleet was put to sea in 1937 and, upon its successful return in early 1938, plans for a third German Antarctic expedition were drawn up.
  
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  Palatinate (region)
  The Palatinate (German: Pfalz from Latin: Palātium, palace; Pfälzer dialect: Palz), historically also Rhenish Palatinate (German: Rheinpfalz), is a region in south-western Germany. It occupies more than a quarter of the German federal state (Bundesland) of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz).
  The western and northern part of the Palatinate is densely forested and mountainous. The highest point is the Donnersberg (687 m) near Kirchheimbolanden. The Palatinate forest (Pfälzerwald), popular with hikers, covers more than a third of the region and is the largest contiguous forest in Germany.
  The eastern part is lower and is a well-known wine region. The German Wine Route (Deutsche Weinstrasse) passes through the Palatinate wine region.
  Most of the cities of the Palatinate (Ludwigshafen, Speyer, Landau, Frankenthal, Neustadt) lie in the Rhine Rift plain in the east of the region, near the Rhine River, which forms the eastern border of the Palatinate.
  Traditionally, the Palatinate is divided into the regions of Anterior Palatinate (Vorderpfalz), West Palatinate (Westpfalz), North Palatinate (Nordpfalz), and South Palatinate (Südpfalz).
  
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  Portugal
  Portugal ⁱ/ˈpɔrtʃʉɡəl/ (Portuguese: Portugal, IPA: [puɾtuˈɣaɫ]), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa) is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula . Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are part of Portugal. The country is named after its second largest city, Porto, whose Latin name was Portus Cale.
  The land within the borders of the current Portuguese Republic has been continuously settled since prehistoric times: occupied by Celts like the Gallaeci and the Lusitanians, integrated into the Roman Republic and later settled by Germanic peoples such as the Suebi, Swabians, Vandals and the Visigoths. In the 8th century most of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Moorish invaders professing Islam, which were later expelled by the Knights Templar under the Order of Christ. During the Christian Reconquista, Portugal established itself as an independent kingdom from León in 1139, claiming to be the oldest European nation state.
  
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  Romania
  Romania (ⁱ/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
  At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
  The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
  
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  Russia
  Russia ⁱ/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
  
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• Schwab's Pharmacy
  Schwab's Pharmacy was a drug store located at 8024 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, and was a popular hangout for movie actors and movie industry dealmakers from the 1930s through the 1950s. Like many drug stores in the United States throughout the mid-twentieth century, Schwab's sold medicines and had a counter serving ice cream dishes and light meals.
  Schwab's closed its doors in October 1983. Five years later, on October 6, 1988, Schwab's was demolished to make way for a shopping complex and multiplex theater.
  A persistent Hollywood legend has it that actress Lana Turner was "discovered" by director Mervyn LeRoy while at the soda counter at Schwab's. While the 16-year-old Turner was indeed discovered at a soda counter, the actual location was not Schwab's but another Sunset Boulevard establishment, the Top Hat Cafe, and the person who discovered her was not LeRoy but Hollywood Reporter publisher William Wilkerson.
  The exterior of Schwab's is featured in the film Sunset Boulevard as a setting where the lead character, down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis, ran into friends in the movie industry. For filming convenience, director Billy Wilder had the store's interior duplicated on the lot of Paramount Pictures. In an episode of I Love Lucy, when Lucy visits California while Ricky is making a movie, she announces that she is going down to Schwab's Drug Store to be discovered.
  
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  Serbia
  Serbia ⁱ/ˈsɜrbiə/, officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Република Србија / Republika Srbija, pronounced [rɛpǔblika sř̩bija]), is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans. Serbia borders Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east; the Republic of Macedonia to the south; and Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to the west; additionally, it borders Albania through Kosovo, whose status as part of Serbia is disputed. Serbia covers an area of 88,361 km² and has a population of just over 7.1 million, while the capital and largest city is Belgrade.
  The arrival of the Serbs to the Balkans in the 7th century, established several states, eventually forming the Serbian Empire in the 14th century. By the 16th century, Serbia was conquered and occupied by the Ottoman Empire, at times interrupted by the Habsburgs. In the early 19th century the Serbian revolution re-established the country as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory and pioneered the abolition of feudalism in the Balkans. The former Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina united with Serbia in 1918. Following World War I, Serbia formed Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples which existed in several forms up until 2006, when the National Assembly of Serbia declared independence and the legal succession to the former State Union. In February 2008 the parliament of UNMIK-governed Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, declared independence, with mixed responses from international governments.
  
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  Slovenia
  Slovenia (ⁱ/sloʊˈviːniə/ sloh-VEE-nee-ə, Slovene: Slovenija), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Republika Slovenija,  [reˈpublika sloˈveːnija]) is a Slavic nation state, situated in South-Central Europe, at the crossroad of main European cultural and trade routes. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Croatia to the south and southeast, and Hungary to the northeast. It covers 20,273 square kilometres (7,827 sq mi) and has a population of 2.05 million. It is a parliamentary republic, member of the European Union and NATO. Relative to its geography, history, economy, culture, and language, it is a very diverse country distinguished by a transitional character. It is characterised by a high economic and social level. Its capital and largest city is Ljubljana.
  The territory of Slovenia is mainly hilly or mountainous and has an exceptionally high landscape and biological diversity and a mosaic structure, which are a result of natural attributes and the long-lasting presence of humans. Four major European geographic units interweave here: the Alps, the Dinaric Alps, the Mediterranean, with a small portion of coastline along the Adriatic Sea, and the Pannonian Plain. The climate is temperate and significantly influenced by the variety of territory, with a strong interaction of the continental climate, the sub-Mediterranean climate and Alpine climate across most of the country. The country is one of the water-richest in Europe, with a dense river network, a rich aquifer system, and significant karstic underground watercourses. Over half of the territory is covered by forest.
  
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  Swaffham
  Coordinates: 52°39′10″N 0°41′03″E / 52.652893°N 0.684285°E / 52.652893; 0.684285
  Swaffham is a market town and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The town is situated 20 km (12 mi) east of King's Lynn and 50 km (31 mi) west of Norwich.
  The civil parish has an area of 29.57 km² (11.42 sq mi) and in the 2001 census had a population of 6,935 in 3,130 households. For the purposes of local government, the parish falls within the district of Breckland.
  Its name came from Old English Swǣfa hām = "the homestead of the Swabians"; some of them presumably came with the Angles and Saxons. In the Domesday Book three lords were associated with Swaffham: Walter Giffard, with the largest manor; his tenant Hugh Bolebec, who held all of the Giffard land there; and Aubrey de Vere I, who held a smaller manor at Swaffham which the Domesday jurors said Aubrey had seized without the king's permission. As the Bolebec estates passed into Vere hands through two marriages of Bolebec heiresses to Vere males in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, the two manors were combined and held by the Vere Earls of Oxford for several centuries.
  
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  Switzerland
  Switzerland (German: die Schweiz[ˈʃvaɪts]; French: Suisse [sɥis(ə)]; Italian: Svizzera [ˈzvit͡sːɛra]; Romansh: Svizra [ˈʒviːtsrɐ] or [ˈʒviːtsʁːɐ]), in its full name the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western Europe, where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to the south, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.
  Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found. Among them are the two global cities and economic centres of Zurich and Geneva.
  The Swiss Confederation has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. It pursues, however, an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. Switzerland is also the birthplace of the Red Cross and home to a large number of international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association and is part of the Schengen Area – although it is notably not a member of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area.
  
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  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
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  Vosges Mountains
  The Vosges (French pronunciation: [voːʒ]) (German: Vogesen [foˈɡeːzn̩]) are a range of low mountains in eastern France, near its border with western Germany. They extend along the west side of the Rhine valley in a north-northeast direction, mainly from Belfort to Saverne. The Grand Ballon is the highest peak at 1424 m.
  The elongated massif is divided south to north into three sections:
  In addition, the term "Central Vosges" is used to designate the various lines of summits, especially those above 1000 metres in elevation. The French department of Vosges is named after the range.
  From a geological point of view, a graben in the beginning of the Tertiary area caused the formation of Alsace and the uplift of the plates of the Vosges now in eastern France and the Black Forest now in Germany. Strictly speaking scientifically, the Vosges Mountains are not mountains as such, but rather the western edge of the unfinished Alsatian graben, stretching continuously as part of the larger Tertiary formations. Erosive glacial action was the primary means by which the representative highland massif feature developed.
  
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  Weimar Republic
  The Weimar Republic (Weimarer Republik [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk] ( listen)) is the name given by historians to the federal republic and parliamentary representative democracy established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was German Reich (Deutsches Reich)
  Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11 August of that same year. The ensuing period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in 1933. The legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The republic nominally continued to exist until 1945, as the constitution was never formally repealed. However, the measures taken by the Nazis in the early part of their rule rendered the constitution irrelevant. Thus, 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich.
  
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  Württemberg
  The Kingdom of Württemberg (German: Königreich Württemberg) was a state that existed from 1806 to 1918, located in the area that is now Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The kingdom was a continuation of the Duchy of Württemberg, which came into existence in 1495. Prior to 1495, the ruling house of Württemberg had consisted of counts ruling only a fragment of the Duchy of Swabia, which had dissolved after the death of Conrad I in 1268.
  The border of the Kingdom of Württemberg, as defined in 1813, was situated between 47°34' and 49°35' North and 8°15' and 10°30' East. The greatest distance north-south was 225 km and the greatest east-west was 160 km. The border had a total length of 1800 km. The total area of the state was 19,508 km².
  It shared a boundary on the East with Bavaria, and on the other three sides with Baden, with the exception of a short distance on the south, where it bordered Hohenzollern and Lake Constance.
  Württemberg, once a Duchy within the Holy Roman Empire, on 1 January 1806 Duke Frederick II assumed the title of king as King Frederick I, abrogated the constitution and united old and new Württemberg. Subsequently he placed the property of the church under the control of the kingdom, whose boundaries were also greatly extended by the process "mediatisation".
  
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  Adolf Hitler
  Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
  A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
  
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  Alamanni
  The Alemanni (also Alamanni, Alamani) were a confederation of Suebian Germanic tribes located on the upper Rhine river. First mentioned by the Romans in 213, the Alamanni captured the Agri Decumates in 260, and later expanded into present-day Alsace, and northern Switzerland, establishing the German language in those regions. In 496, the Alamanni were conquered by Frankish leader Clovis and incorporated into his dominions. The legacy of the Alamanni survives in the names of Germany in several languages.
  According to Asinius Quadratus (quoted in the mid-6th century by Byzantine historian Agathias) their name means "all men". It indicates that they were a conglomeration drawn from various Germanic tribes. This was the derivation of Alemanni used by Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and by the anonymous contributor of notes assembled from the papers of Nicolas Fréret, published in 1753, who noted that it was the name used by outsiders for those who called themselves the Suevi. This etymology has remained the standard derivation of the term.
  
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  Albert Einstein
  Albert Einstein ( /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ( listen); 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc² (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory within physics.
  Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.
  
  wn.com/Albert_Einstein
• Alfred Haag
  Alfred Haag (15 December 1904, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Württemberg – 8 August 1982) was a member of the Youth movement of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the small Württemberg town of Schwäbisch Gmünd in the 1920s, he married another communist; Lina Haag in 1927. He was a volunteer editor for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung workers in Stuttgart, later he was elected a member of the regional parliament for the KPD until Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Both Alfred and Lina were soon arrested, and both spent many years in prisons and concentration camps.
  Alfred was first in the Upper Kuhberg Concentration Camp near Ulm until it was dissolved in 1935, then at the Dachau concentration camp until 1939, when he was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Lina was released in 1939, and having been reunited with their daughter, she moved to Berlin and obtained work. She visited the HQ of the SS almost daily to petition for her husband's release until 1940, when she finally, and incredibly, obtained permission for an audience with Heinrich Himmler and he secured Alfred's release from Mauthausen. He had survived physical torture whilst detained there and at Dachau.
  
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  Alsace
  Alsace (French: Alsace [alzas]; Alsatian: Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass, pre-1996: Elsaß, IPA: [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area (8,280 km²), and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km² (total population in 2006: 1,815,488; 1 January 2008 estimate: 1,836,000). Alsace is located on France's eastern border and on the west bank of the upper Rhine adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. The political, economic and cultural capital as well as largest city of Alsace is Strasbourg. Because that city is the seat of dozens of international organizations and bodies, Alsace is politically one of the most important regions in the European Union.
  The name "Alsace" can be traced back to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation derives it from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. The region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was gradually annexed by France in the 17th century under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV and made one of the provinces of France. Alsace is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Lorraine, because German possession of parts of these two régions (as the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918) was contested in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years.
  
  wn.com/Alsace
• Andreas Stihl
  Andreas Stihl (November 10, 1896, in Zürich, Switzerland; † January 14, 1973 in Rohrbronn, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was an engineer and important inventor in the area of chainsaws, the founder of the company Stihl.
  Stihl founded a company for steam boiler prefiring systems in 1926 in the town of Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, Germany. In the same year, he patented the "Cutoff Chainsaw for Electric Power." This saw weighed in at a hefty 63kg and had a one-inch gauge chain with handles at either end. Due to its bulk, it required two people to operate. In 1929, Stihl built the world's first petrol powered chainsaw, named the 'tree-felling machine.' The company continued to grow and in 1931 it became the first European company to export chainsaws to America and Russia. In 1950, Stihl developed the first chainsaw capable of being operated by a single person. In 1959, the company introduced the lightweight Stihl Contra chainsaw.
  The company he founded still bears his name, and is privately owned by his children.
  
  wn.com/Andreas_Stihl
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  Angles
  The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The Angles were one of the main groups that settled in Britain in the post-Roman period, founding several of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name "England".
  The name of the Angles is first recorded in Latinized form, as Anglii, in the Germania of Tacitus. The name is usually derived from a toponym, Angeln, from a Germanic word *anguz meaning "narrow" (of an estuary) or "angular" (of the shape of the Jutland peninsula).
  Gregory the Great in an epistle simplified the Latinized name Anglii to Angli, the latter form developing into the preferred form of the word. The country remained Anglia in Latin. King Alfred's (Alfred the Great) translation of Orosius' history of the world uses Angelcynn (-kin) to describe England and the English people; Bede used Angelfolc (-folk); there are also such forms as Engel, Englan (the people), Englaland, and Englisc, all showing i-mutation.
  
  wn.com/Angles
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  Battle of Tolbiac
  Coordinates: 50°40′31″N 6°36′4″E / 50.67528°N 6.60111°E / 50.67528; 6.60111
  The Battle of Tolbiac was fought between the Franks under Clovis I and the Alamanni, traditionally set in 496. The site of "Tolbiac", or "Tulpiacum" is usually given as Zülpich, North Rhine-Westphalia, about 60km east of the present German-Belgian frontier, which is not implausible. The Franks were successful at Tolbiac and established their hegemony over the Alamanni.
  Gregory of Tours first inserted the thematic element that has shaped subsequent interpretations of Tolbiac as a climacteric in the course of European history: Clovis is said to have attributed his success to a vow that he had made: if he won, he would convert to the religion of the Christian God who had aided him. He became a Christian in a ceremony at Reims at Christmas 496; the traditional date of the battle of Tolbiac has been established to accord with this firmly attested baptismal date, by accepting as literal truth Gregory's account which has a clear parallel with the conversion of Constantine I, connected by Lactantius with the equally conclusive Battle of the Milvian Bridge. A surviving letter from Avitus of Vienne, congratulating Clovis on his baptism, makes no mention of the supposed recent battlefield conversion.
  
  wn.com/Battle_of_Tolbiac
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  Berthold Brecht
  Bertolt Brecht (German: [ˈbɛɐ̯tɔlt ˈbʁɛçt] ( listen); born  Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (help·info); 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.
  An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.
  Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, (about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Munich) to a conventionally-devout Protestant mother and a Catholic father (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Thanks to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would impact on his writing throughout his life. From her, too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a lifelong creative partnership, Neher designing many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helping to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.
  
  wn.com/Berthold_Brecht
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  Brothers Grimm
  The Brothers Grimm (German: Brüder Grimm or Die Gebrüder Grimm), Jakob Grimm (January 4, 1785 – September 20, 1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (February 24, 1786 – December 16, 1859), were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who together collected folklore. They are among the most well-known storytellers of European folk tales, and their work popularized such stories as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince" (Der Froschkönig), "Hansel and Gretel" (Hänsel und Gretel), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" (Rumpelstilzchen), and "Snow White" (Schneewittchen). Their first collection of folk tales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812.
  The brothers spent their formative years first in the German town of Hanau and then in Steinau. Their father's death in 1796, about a decade into their lives, caused great poverty for the family and affected the brothers for many years. They attended the University of Marburg where historian and jurist Friedrich von Savigny spurred their interest in philology and Germanic studies—a field in which they are now considered pioneers—and at the same time developed a curiosity for folklore, which grew into a life-long dedication to collecting German folk tales.
  
  wn.com/Brothers_Grimm
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  Carl Laemmle
  Carl Laemmle (January 17, 1867 – September 24, 1939), born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios – Universal. Laemmle produced or was otherwise involved in over four hundred films.
  Regarded as one of the most important of the early film pioneers, Laemmle was born on the Radstrasse just outside the former Jewish quarter of Laupheim. He emigrated to the US in 1884, working in Chicago as a bookkeeper or office manager for 20 years. He began buying nickelodeons, eventually expanding into a film distribution service, the Laemmle Film Service.
  On April 30, 1912, in New York, Carl Laemmle of IMP, Pat Powers of Powers Motion Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Film Company, William Swanson of Rex Motion Picture Company, David Horsley of Nestor Film Company and Charles Baumann and Adam Kessel of the New York Motion Picture Company merged their studios and the Universal Film Manufacturing Company was incorporated. They founded the Universal Motion Picture Manufacturing Company in 1912, and established the studio on 235 acres (0.95 km²) of land in the San Fernando Valley, California in 1915.
  
  wn.com/Carl_Laemmle
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  Charlemagne
  Charlemagne ( /ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/ or /ˈʃɑrləmeɪn/; French pronunciation: [ʃaʁ.lə.maɲ]; c. 742 – 28 January 814), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus), was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 in Rome.
  His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.
  The son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, a Frankish queen, he succeeded his father in 768 and was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. It has often been suggested that the relationship between Charlemagne and Carloman was not good, but it has also been argued that tensions were exaggerated by Carolingian chroniclers.
  
  wn.com/Charlemagne
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  Conradin
  Conrad (25 March 1252 – 29 October 1268), called the Younger or the Boy, but usually known by the diminutive Conradin (German: Konradin, Italian: Corradino), was the Duke of Swabia (1254–1268, as Conrad IV), King of Jerusalem (1254–1268, as Conrad III), and King of Sicily (1254–1258, de jure until 1268, as Conrad II).
  Conradin was born in Wolfstein, Bavaria, to Conrad IV of Germany and Elisabeth of Wittelsbach. He is sometimes known as Conrad V of the Holy Roman Empire or Conrad V of Germany, though he never succeeded his father in Germany (although he was recognized as king of the Germans, Sicily, and Jerusalem by German supporters of the Hohenstaufens in 1254).
  Having lost his father in 1254, he grew up at the court of his uncle and guardian, Louis II, Duke of Upper Bavaria. His guardians were able to hold Swabia for him. Jerusalem was held by a relative from the royal house of Cyprus as regent. In Sicily, his father's half-brother Manfred continued as regent, but began to develop plans to usurp the kingship.
  
  wn.com/Conradin
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  Dieter Baumann
  Dieter Baumann (born February 9, 1965) is a former German athlete and winner of 5000 m at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
  Born in Blaustein, Germany (then West Germany), Dieter Baumann was one of the few non-African athletes who were able to seriously challenge the African dominance of middle-distance running during the 1990s. Baumann was equally adept at both the 1500 m and 5000 m distances.
  Although Baumann came second in the 3000 m at the European Indoor Championships in 1987, few considered him a medal chance at the Seoul Olympic Games. The 5000 m final at Seoul was won by John Ngugi from Kenya who broke away from the field early in the race. However, Baumann used his superior 1500 m speed to outsprint the rest of the field in the final lap to win the silver medal. Baumann missed most of the 1990 season due to tendon trouble, but he returned in 1991 to finish fourth in the 5000 m at the World Championships in Tokyo. At the end of the season, Baumann unexpectedly beat the Kenyan 5000 m world champion Yobes Ondieki over 3000 m in Cologne.
  
  wn.com/Dieter_Baumann
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  Dieter Dengler
  Dieter Dengler (May 22, 1938 – February 7, 2001) was a German-born United States Navy Naval aviator during the Vietnam War. He was one of the two survivors (the other being Pisidhi Indradat), out of seven, to escape from a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos. He was rescued after 23 days on the run, and was the first captured U.S. airman to escape after six months of torture and imprisonment.
  Dieter Dengler was born and grew up in the small town of Wildberg in the Black Forest region of Germany. He was very close to his mother and brothers. Dengler did not know his father, who was killed while serving in the Wehrmacht during World War II. His grandfather was declared a political enemy of the Nazis for being the only citizen in his town who did not vote for Hitler. Dengler later credited his grandfather's resolve as a major inspiration during his time in Laos. His grandfather's steadfastness, despite great danger, was one reason Dengler refused to sign a document decrying American aggression in Southeast Asia, presented to him by the North Vietnamese after his crash.
  
  wn.com/Dieter_Dengler
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  Eduard Mörike
  Eduard Friedrich Mörike (8 September 1804 – 4 June 1875) was a German Romantic poet.
  Mörike was born in Ludwigsburg. His father was Karl Friedrich Mörike (d. 1817), a district medical councilor; his mother was Charlotte Bayer. He attended the Latin school at Ludwigsburg, and the seminary at Urach (1818) where he made the acquaintance of Wilhelm Hartlaub and Wilhelm Waiblinger. He then studied theology at the Seminary of Tübingen where he met Ludwig Bauer, David Friedrich Strauss and F. T. Vischer.
  He followed an ecclesiastical career, becoming a Lutheran pastor. In 1834 he was appointed pastor of Cleversulzbach near Weinsberg, and, after his early retirement for reasons of health, in 1851 became professor of German literature at the Katharinenstift in Stuttgart. This office he held until his retirement in 1866; but he continued to live at Stuttgart until his death. In what political and social views he espoused, he was monarchist and conservative.
  Mörike is a member of the so-called Swabian school which gathered around Ludwig Uhland. His poems, Gedichte (1838; 22nd ed., 1905), are mostly lyrics, often humorous, but expressed in simple and natural language. His Lieder (songs) are traditional in form and have been compared to those of Goethe. His ballad “Schön Rotraut” — opening with the line “Wie heisst König Ringangs Töchterlein?” — became a popular favorite.
  
  wn.com/Eduard_Mörike
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  Elbe Germanic
  The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe watershed and by the 1st century AD expanding into Bavaria, Swabia and Bohemia. Irminonic or Elbe Germanic is a conventional term grouping early West Germanic dialects ancestral to High German.
  The name Irminones comes from Tacitus’s Germania (98 AD) who categorized them as one of the tribes of Mannus. Other West Germanic proto-tribes were the Ingvaeones and Istvaeones, all of them living in the "Central region" of Germania, as well as the Suebi, which include the Semnones, the Quadi and the Marcomanni.
  Pomponius Mela writes in his Description of the World (III.3.31) in reference to the Kattegat and the waters surrounding the Danish isles (see the Codanus sinus):
  Mela then begins to speak of the Scythians.
  Pliny's Natural History (4.100) claims that the Irminones include the Suebi, Hermunduri, Chatti, and Cherusci.
  In Nennius the name Mannus (see Mannaz) and his three sons appear in corrupted form, the ancestor of the Irminones appearing as Armenon. His sons here are Gothus, Valagothus/Balagothus, Cibidus, Burgundus, and Longobardus, whence come the Goths (and Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Crimean Goths), Valagoths/Balagoths, Cibidi, Burgundians and Lombards (Langobards).
  
  wn.com/Elbe_Germanic
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  Erich Hartmann
  Erich Alfred Hartmann (19 April 1922 – 20 September 1993), nicknamed "Bubi" (the hypocoristic form of "young boy") by his comrades and "The Black Devil" by his Soviet enemies, was a German World War II fighter pilot and is the highest-scoring fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. He claimed 352 aerial victories (of which 345 were won against the Soviet Air Force, and 260 of which were fighters) in 1,404 combat missions. He engaged in aerial combat 825 times while serving with the Luftwaffe. During the course of his career, Hartmann was forced to crash-land his damaged fighter 14 times. This was due to damage received from parts of enemy aircraft he had just shot down or mechanical failure. Hartmann was never shot down or forced to land due to fire from enemy aircraft.
  Hartmann, a pre-war glider pilot, joined the Luftwaffe in 1940 and completed his fighter pilot training in 1942. He was posted to Jagdgeschwader 52 (JG 52) on the Eastern front and was fortunate to be placed under the supervision of some of the Luftwaffe's most experienced fighter pilots. Under their guidance, Hartmann steadily developed his tactics, which earned him the coveted Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten (Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds) on 25 August 1944 for claiming 301 aerial victories.
  
  wn.com/Erich_Hartmann
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  Ernst Heinkel
  Dr. Ernst Heinkel (January 24, 1888 – January 30, 1958) was a German aircraft designer, manufacturer, Wehrwirtschaftführer in the Third Reich, and member of the Nazi party. His company Heinkel Flugzeugwerke produced the Heinkel He 178, the world's first turbojet aircraft and jet plane, and the Heinkel He 176, the first rocket aircraft. He was awarded the German National Prize for Art and Science in 1938.
  He was born in Grunbach and as a young man became an apprentice machinist at a foundry. Heinkel studied at the Technical Academy in Stuttgart, where he initially became interested in aviation through a fascination with Zeppelins, and in 1909 attended an international airshow in Frankfurt am Main. He determined flight was the future of transportation, and the following year, he built his first aircraft, working from a set of plans by Henri Farman. Heinkel crashed the plane in 1911 and suffered severe injuries.
  Soon afterwards, he gained employment at Luft-Verkehrs Gesellschaft (LVG), who were building Farman aircraft. From there, he went to Albatros, where Heinkel designed the Albatros B-II, a reconnaissance aircraft used during the early stages of the First World War. His planes were used by the Austro-Hungarian army and German navy during the war. After leaving the Albatros, Heinkel designed several land- and seaplanes for the Hansa-Brandenburg company starting in 1914.
  
  wn.com/Ernst_Heinkel
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  Erwin Rommel
  Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944), popularly known as the Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs,  listen (help·info)), was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought.
  He was a highly decorated officer in World War I, and was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his exploits on the Italian front. In World War II, he further distinguished himself as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France. However, it was his leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign that established the legend of the Desert Fox. He is considered to have been one of the most skilled commanders of desert warfare in the conflict.^{[page needed]} He later commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion in Normandy.
  As one of the few generals who consistently fought the Western Allies (he was never assigned to the Eastern Front), Rommel is regarded as having been a humane and professional officer. His Afrikakorps was never accused of war crimes. Soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been treated humanely. Furthermore, he ignored orders to kill captured commandos, Jewish soldiers and civilians in all theaters of his command.
  
  wn.com/Erwin_Rommel
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  Faust
  Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works.
  The meaning of the word and name has been reinterpreted through the ages. Faust, and the adjective faustian, are often used to describe an arrangement in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success: the proverbial "deal with the devil".
  The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human to divine knowledge; "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of Theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of Medicine".
  Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun. The story was popularised in England by Christopher Marlowe, who gave it a classic treatment in his play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. In Goethe's reworking of the story 200 years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink".
  
  wn.com/Faust
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  Francia
  Francia or Frankia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks or Frankish Kingdom (Latin: regnum Francorum), Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks from the 3rd to the 10th century. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne—father, son, grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century.
  The tradition of dividing patrimonies among brothers meant that the Frankish realm was ruled, nominally, as one polity subdivided into several regna (kingdoms or subkingdoms). The geography and number of subkingdoms varied over time, but the particular term Francia came generally to refer to just one regnum, that of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse rivers in northern Europe; even so, sometimes the term was used as well to encompass Neustria north of the Loire and west of the Seine. Eventually, the singular use of the name Francia shifted towards Paris, and settled on the region of the Seine basin surrounding Paris, which still today bears the name Île-de-France, and which region gave its name to the entire Kingdom of France.
  
  wn.com/Francia
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  Frankish Empire
  Francia or Frankia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks or Frankish Kingdom (Latin: regnum Francorum), Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks from the 3rd to the 10th century. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne—father, son, grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century.
  The tradition of dividing patrimonies among brothers meant that the Frankish realm was ruled, nominally, as one polity subdivided into several regna (kingdoms or subkingdoms). The geography and number of subkingdoms varied over time, but the particular term Francia came generally to refer to just one regnum, that of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse rivers in northern Europe; even so, sometimes the term was used as well to encompass Neustria north of the Loire and west of the Seine. Eventually, the singular use of the name Francia shifted towards Paris, and settled on the region of the Seine basin surrounding Paris, which still today bears the name Île-de-France, and which region gave its name to the entire Kingdom of France.
  
  wn.com/Frankish_Empire
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  Frederick Barbarossa
  Frederick I Barbarossa (1122 – 10 June 1190) was a German Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March as King of Italy in Pavia in 1155, and finally crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, on 18 June 1155. Two years later in 1157 the term "sacrum" (i.e. "holy") first appeared in a document in connection with his Empire. He was then also formally crowned King of Burgundy at Arles on 30 June 1178. The name Barbarossa came from the northern Italian cities he attempted to rule, and means "red beard" in Italian – a mark of both their fear and respect. In German he was known as Kaiser Rotbart, which has the same meaning.
  Before his royal election, he was by inheritance Duke of Swabia (1147–1152, as Frederick III). He was the son of Duke Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. His mother was Judith, daughter of Henry IX, Duke of Bavaria, from the rival House of Welf, and Frederick therefore descended from Germany's two leading families, making him an acceptable choice for the Empire's prince-electors.
  
  wn.com/Frederick_Barbarossa
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  Friedrich Schiller
  Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller [ˈjoːhan ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈfʁiːdʁɪç fɔn ˈʃɪlɐ] (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.
  Friedrich Schiller was born on 10 November 1759, in Marbach, Württemberg as the only son of military doctor Johann Kaspar Schiller (1733–96), and Elisabeth Dorothea Kodweiß (1732–1802). They also had five daughters. His father was away in the Seven Years' War when Friedrich was born. He was named after king Frederick the Great, but he was called Fritz by nearly everyone. Kaspar Schiller was rarely home during the war, but he did manage to visit the family once in a while. His wife and children also visited him occasionally wherever he happened to be stationed. When the war ended in 1763, Schiller's father became a recruiting officer and was stationed in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The family moved with him. Due to the high cost of living—especially the rent—the family moved to nearby Lorch.
  
  wn.com/Friedrich_Schiller
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  Georg Elser
  Johann Georg Elser (4 January 1903 – 9 April 1945) was a German opponent of Nazism. He planned and carried out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on 8 November 1939 in Munich, and he also planned to assassinate Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels in 1939.
  Elser was born in Hermaringen, Württemberg. His parents were Ludwig Elser and Maria Müller, who married one year after Georg's birth. Georg attended elementary school in Königsbronn from 1910 – 1917 and showed ability in drawing and handicrafts. His father was a farmer and lumber dealer, and expected his son to succeed him in this trade. Georg, who had helped his father in his work, however, instead pursued his own interests.^{[citation needed]} He began an apprenticeship as a lathe operator in a foundry, which he quit two years later for health reasons. He completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter in 1922. He then worked as a carpenter in several joineries in Königsbronn, Aalen and Heidenheim. From 1925 – 1929, he worked in a watch factory in Konstanz, where he acquired the knowledge enabling him to build the timer for the bomb he was later to use in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. From 1929 – 1932 he worked as a carpenter, in Switzerland.
  
  wn.com/Georg_Elser
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  Gottlieb Daimler
  Gottlieb Daimler (German pronunciation: [ˈɡɔtliːp ˈdaɪmlɐ]; March 17, 1834 – March 6, 1900) was an engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf (Kingdom of Württemberg, a federal state of the German Confederation), in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed petrol engine and the first four-wheel automobile.
  Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose goal was to create small, high-speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. In 1885 they designed a precursor of the modern petrol (gasoline) engine which they subsequently fitted to a two-wheeler, the first internal combustion motorcycle and, in the next year, to a stagecoach, and a boat. Daimler baptized it the Grandfather Clock engine (Standuhr) because of its resemblance to an old pendulum clock.
  In 1890, they founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG, in English—Daimler Motors Corporation). They sold their first automobile in 1892. Daimler fell ill and took a break from the business. Upon his return he experienced difficulty with the other stockholders that led to his resignation in 1893. This was reversed in 1894. Maybach resigned at the same time, and also returned. In 1900 Daimler died and Wilhelm Maybach quit DMG in 1907. In 1924, the DMG management signed a long term co-operation agreement with Karl Benz's Benz & Cie., and in 1926 the two companies merged to become Daimler-Benz AG, which is now part of Daimler AG.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Gottlieb_Daimler
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  Gudrun Ensslin
  Gudrun Ensslin (German pronunciation: [ˈɡuːdʁuːn ˈɛnsliːn]; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a founder of the German militant group Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang). After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's voluntaristic anarchistic beliefs^{[citation needed]}. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF. She was involved in five bomb attacks, with four deaths, was arrested in 1972 and died on 18 October 1977 in what has been called Stammheim Prison's Death Night.
  Ensslin, the fourth of seven children, was born in the village of Bartholomä in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Her father, Helmut, was a pastor of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Ensslin was a well-behaved child who did well at school and enjoyed working with the Evangelical Girl Scouts, and doing parish work such as organizing Bible studies. In her family, the social injustices of the world were often discussed, and Gudrun is said to have been sensitized to social problems in West Germany and the world as a whole.
  
  wn.com/Gudrun_Ensslin
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  Hans Scholl
  Hans Fritz Scholl (22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was a founding member of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany.
  Scholl was born in Ingersheim (now a part of Crailsheim, Baden-Württemberg). His father later became the mayor of Forchtenberg am Kocher. Hans was the second of six children: Inge Aicher-Scholl (1917–1998), Hans, Elisabeth Hartnagel (b. 1920), Sophie (1921–1943), Werner Scholl (1922, missing in action since June 1944) and Thilde (1925–1926).
  In 1933 he joined the Hitler Youth, but quickly became disillusioned when he realised the true meaning behind the group. He was raised as a Lutheran, although he did at one point consider converting to Catholicism. After this, Hans Scholl studied in the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Medizin (medicine).
  In the early summer of 1942, Scholl, his sister Sophie, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, and Alexander Schmorell co-authored six anti-Nazi Third Reich political resistance leaflets. Calling themselves the White Rose, they instructed Germans to passively resist the Nazis. The group had been horrified by the behavior of some German soldiers on the Eastern Front, where they had witnessed cruelty towards Jews in Poland and Russia.
  
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  Herman the Cripple
  Hermann of Reichenau (1013 July 18 – 1054 September 24), also called Hermannus Contractus or Hermannus Augiensis or Herman the Cripple, was an 11th century scholar, composer, music theorist, mathematician, and astronomer. He composed the Marian prayer Alma Redemptoris Mater. He was beatified (cultus confirmed) in 1863.
  Hermann was a son of the duke of Altshausen. He was crippled by a paralytic disease from early childhood. He was born in 1013 with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy and spina bifida. [None of the sources cited just the specific diagnosis of spina bifida]. As a result he had great difficulty moving and could hardly speak. At the age of seven he was placed in a Benedictine monastery by his parents who could no longer look after him. He grew up in the monastery, learning from the monks and developing a keen interest in both theology and the world around him.
  He spent most of his life in the abbey of Reichenau, an island on Lake Constance. Hermannus contributed to all four arts of the quadrivium. He was renowned as a musical composer (among his surviving works are officia for St. Afra and St. Wolfgang). He also wrote a treatise on the science of music, several works on geometry and arithmetics and astronomical treatises (including instructions for the construction of an astrolabe, at the time a very novel device in Western Europe). As a historian, he wrote a detailed chronicle from the birth of Christ to his own present day, for the first time compiling the events of the 1st millennium AD scattered in various chronicles in a single work, ordering them after the reckoning of the Christian era. His disciple Berthold of Reichenau was its continuator.
  
  wn.com/Herman_the_Cripple
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  Hermann Hesse
  Hermann Hesse (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛɐ̯man ˈhɛsə]; July 2, 1877 – August 9, 1962) was a German poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi), each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.
  Hermann Hesse was born on 2 July 1877 in the Black Forest town of Calw in Württemberg, Germany. Both of Hesse's parents served in India at a mission under the auspices of the Basel Mission, a Protestant Christian missionary society. Hesse's mother, Marie Gundert, was born at such a mission in India in 1842. In describing her own childhood, she said, "A happy child I was not..." As was usual among missionaries at the time, she was left behind in Europe at the age of four when her parents went to India. In her teens she attempted to rebel against her authoritarian father, Hermann Gundert, but finally submitted.
  
  wn.com/Hermann_Hesse
• Hermeric
  Hermeric (died 441) was the Suevic King of Galicia from perhaps as early as 406 and certainly no later than 419 until his retirement in 438. He was a pagan and an enemy of the Roman Empire throughout his life. He is given a reign of thirty two years in most manuscripts of Isidore of Seville's Historia Suevorum, but fourteen years in one manuscript.
  Hermeric led the Suevi across the frozen Rhine along with the Vandals and Alans in December 409. They crossed Gaul and the Pyrenees and settled in the Hispania. While Theodore Mommsen believed the Suevi were foederati and Ernst Stein seconded the notion by believing they had made an agreement with the Roman usurper Magnus Maximus whereby they received the western half of Iberia, there is no primary evidence for any alliance between the Suevi and Rome. In 411 (according to Ludwig Schmidt) or 417 (according to Felix Dahn), Hermeric made a treaty with the Roman emperor Honorius, but in fact the only event of note in 411 was the division of Iberia sorte (by lot) between the barbarian peoples. The east of the province of Gallaecia with its capital of Braga (Bracara Augusta) fell to the Suevi, while the west of the province went to the populous Hasdingi.
  
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  Hohenstaufen
  The House of Hohenstaufen, also known as the Swabian dynasty or the Staufer, was a dynasty of German monarchs in the High Middle Ages, reigning from 1138 to 1254. Three members of the dynasty were crowned Holy Roman Emperors. In 1194, the Hohenstaufens were granted the Kingdom of Sicily. The terms Hofenstaufen and Staufen also identified the family's castle in Swabia, located on an eponymous mountain near Göppingen. This second castle was built by the first known member of the dynasty, Duke Frederick I.
  In 1079, the Salian king Henry IV of Germany appointed Count Frederick I at Hohenstaufen Castle as Duke of Swabia. At the same time, Frederick was engaged to the king's approximately seven-year old daughter, Agnes. Nothing is known about Frederick's life before this event, but he proved to be Imperial ally throughout Henry's struggles against other Swabian lords, namely Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Frederick's predecessor, and the Zähringen and Welf lords. Frederick's brother Otto was elevated to the Strasbourg bishopric in 1082.
  
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  Johannes Kepler
  Johannes Kepler (German pronunciation: [ˈkʰɛplɐ]; December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
  During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and mentioned the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.
  
  wn.com/Johannes_Kepler
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  Justinus Kerner
  Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner (September 18, 1786 – February 21, 1862) was a German poet and medical writer.
  He was born at Ludwigsburg in Württemberg. After attending the classical schools of Ludwigsburg and Maulbronn, he was apprenticed in a cloth factory, but, in 1804, owing to the good services of Professor Karl Philipp Conz, was able to enter the University of Tübingen. He studied medicine but also had time for literary pursuits in the company of Ludwig Uhland, Gustav Schwab and others. He took his doctor's degree in 1808, spent some time travelling, and then settled as a practising physician in Wildbad.
  Here he completed his Reiseschatten von dem Schattenspieler Luchs (1811), in which his own experiences are described with caustic humour. He next collaborated with Uhland and Schwab in the Poetischer Almanach for 1812, which was followed by the Deutscher Dichterwald (1813), and in these some of Kerner's best poems were published. In 1815 he obtained the official appointment of district medical officer (Oberamtsarzt) in Gaildorf, and in 1818 was transferred to Weinsberg, where he spent the rest of his life
  
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  Jürgen Klinsmann
  Jürgen Klinsmann (born 30 July 1964 in Göppingen) is a German football manager and former player who is currently the coach of the United States men's National team. As a player, Klinsmann played for several prominent clubs in Europe and was part of the West German team that won the 1990 FIFA World Cup and the German one that won the 1996 UEFA European Championship. One of West Germany's/Germany's premier strikers during the 1990s, Klinsmann scored in all six major international tournaments he participated, from Euro 1988 to 1998 World Cup.
  He managed the German national team to a third-place finish in the 2006 World Cup. On 12 July 2006, Klinsmann officially announced that he would step down as Germany's coach after two years in charge and be replaced by assistant coach Joachim Löw. He took over as coach of Bayern Munich in July 2008, when Ottmar Hitzfeld stepped down to take over as the head coach of the Swiss National Team. On 27 April 2009 he was released early, even though he had won five of the previous seven league games and was only three points behind league leader VfL Wolfsburg. In the jointly initiated reforms at Bayern it emerged there was a severe clash of opinions between coach and club management.
  
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  Karl Benz
   Karl Friedrich Benz (help·info) (November 25, 1844 – April 4, 1929) was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile, and together with Bertha Benz pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz. Other German contemporaries, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach working as partners, also worked on similar types of inventions, without knowledge of the work of the other, but Benz patented his work first, and, subsequently patented all the processes that made the internal combustion engine feasible for use in an automobile. In 1879 his first engine patent was granted to him and in 1886 Benz was granted a patent for his first automobile.
  Karl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant, in Karlsruhe, Baden, which is part of modern Germany, to Josephine Vaillant and a locomotive driver, Johann George Benz, whom she married a few months later. When he was two years old, his father was killed in a railway accident, and his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father.
  
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  Kurt Georg Kiesinger
  Kurt Georg Kiesinger (German pronunciation: [ˈkʊʁt ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈkiːzɪŋɐ]; 6 April 1904–9 March 1988) was a German politician affiliated with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was Chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 until 21 October 1969.
  Born in Ebingen, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg), Kiesinger was educated in Berlin and became a lawyer. As a student, he joined the (non-couleur wearing) Roman Catholic corporations Alamannia Tübingen and Askania-Burgundia Berlin. He became a member of the Nazi Party in February 1933, a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. In 1940, he was called to arms but avoided mobilization by finding a job in the foreign ministry's radio propaganda department, rising quickly to become the ministry's connection with Goebbels' propaganda ministry. After the war, he was interned and spent 18 months in the Ludwigsburg camp before being released as a case of mistaken identity. During the controversies of 1966, the magazine Der Spiegel unearthed a Memorandum dated November 7th 1944 (five months before the war's end) by which a colleague denounced to Himmler a conspiracy including Kiesinger that was propagating defaitism and hampering anti-Jewish actions within their department and several others.
  
  wn.com/Kurt_Georg_Kiesinger
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  Leopold Mozart
  Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (November 14, 1719 – May 28, 1787) was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.
  He was born in Augsburg, son of Johann Georg Mozart (1679–1736), a bookbinder, and his second wife Anna Maria Sulzer (1696–1766). From an early age he sang as a choirboy. He attended a local Jesuit school, the St. Salvator Gymnasium, where he studied logic, science, theology, graduating magna cum laude in 1735. He then moved on to a more advanced school, the St. Salvator Lyceum.
  While a student in Augsburg, he appeared in student theatrical productions as an actor and singer, and became a skilled violinist and organist. He also developed an interest, which he retained, in microscopes and telescopes. Although his parents had planned a career for Leopold as a Catholic priest, this apparently was not Leopold's own wish. An old school friend told Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777, "Ah he [Leopold] was a great fellow. My father thought the world of him. And how he hoodwinked the clerics about becoming a priest!"
  
  wn.com/Leopold_Mozart
• Lina Haag
  Lina Haag née Jäger (born 18 January 1907 in Hagkling, Württemberg) is a former member of the Youth movement of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the small Württemberg town of Schwäbisch Gmünd in the 1920s. In 1927, she married fellow Communist Alfred Haag. Alfred was a member of the regional Parliament for the KPD until Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Both he and Lina were arrested and spent many years in prisons and concentration camps.
  Both Haags showed extraordinary strength of spirit during their incarcerations. Lina spent many years in Remand Prison, during which time she met other prominent prisoners such as Liselotte Herrmann. Lina was freed in 1938 after managing to turn her camp commandant at Lichtenburg against the Stuttgart Gestapo.
  Once released, she was reunited with her daughter, moved to Berlin, and secured a job. She visited the headquarters of the SS almost daily to petition for her husband's release. In 1940, she obtained permission for an audience with Heinrich Himmler, who secured Alfred's release from the Mauthausen concentration camp. Alfred survived physical torture while detained there and also at Dachau concentration camp.
  
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  Ludwig Uhland
  Johann Ludwig Uhland (26 April 1787 – 13 November 1862), was a German poet, philologist and literary historian.
  He was born in Tübingen, then Duchy of Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry. Having graduated as a doctor of laws in 1810, he went to Paris for eight months to continue his studies of poetry; and from 1812 to 1814 he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart, in the bureau of the minister of justice.
  He had begun his career as a poet in 1807 and 1808 by contributing ballads and lyrics to Seckendorff's Musenalmanach; and in 1812 and 1813 he wrote poems for Kerner's Poetischer Almanach and Deutscher Dichterwald. In 1815 he collected his poems in a volume entitled Vaterländische Gedichte, which almost immediately secured a wide circle of readers. To almost every new edition he added some fresh poems. His two dramatic works Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818) and Ludwig der Baier (1819) are unimportant in comparison with his Gedichte.
  
  wn.com/Ludwig_Uhland
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  Margarete Steiff
  Margarete Steiff (July 24, 1847 - May 9, 1909), was a seamstress who in 1880 founded Margarete Steiff GmbH, making toy stuffed animals.
  Born in Giengen, Germany she used a wheelchair, due to polio she contracted as a baby. She started making stuffed animals as a hobby.
  These toys began as elephants, which were originally a design Steiff found in a magazine and originally sold as pincushions to her friends. However, children began playing with them, and in the years following she went on to design many other successful animal-themed toys for children, such as dogs, cats and pigs. She designed and made most of the prototypes herself.
  She died of pneumonia in Giengen.
  
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  Martin Heidegger
  Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976); German pronunciation: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]) was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."
  Heidegger argues that philosophy is preoccupied with what exists and has forgotten the question of the "ground" of being. We find ourselves "always already" fallen into a world that already existed; but he insists that we have forgotten the basic question of what being itself is. This question defines our central nature. He argues that we are practical agents, caring and concerned about our projects in the world, and allowing it to reveal, or "unconceal" itself to us. He also says that our manipulation of reality is often harmful and hides our true being as essentially limited participants, not masters, of the world which we discover.
  Heidegger wrote about these issues in his best-known book, Being and Time (1927), which is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Heidegger's influence is far reaching, from philosophy to deconstructionism and literary theory, theology, architecture, and artificial intelligence.
  
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  Ottmar Mergenthaler
  Ottmar Mergenthaler (May 11, 1854 – October 28, 1899) was a German-born inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of the Linotype machine, the first device that could easily and quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing presses. This machine revolutionized the art of printing.
  Mergenthaler was born in Hachtel, Württemberg, Germany. He was the third son of a school teacher, Johann Georg Mergenthaler from Hohenacker near the city of Waiblingen.
  He was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Bietigheim before immigrating to the United States in 1872 to work with his cousin August Hahl in Washington, D.C. Mergenthaler eventually moved with Hahl's shop to Baltimore, MD.
  In 1876 he was approached by James O. Clephane, who sought a quicker way of publishing legal briefs., via Charles T. Moore who held a patent on a typewriter for newspapers which did not work and asked Mergenthaler to construct a better model. Mergenthaler recognized that Moore's design was faulty and two years later he had assembled a machine that stamped letters and words on cardboard. Although a fire destroyed all his designs and models, he started to work on the invention again as he wrote to himself "more books --- more education for all. At home we had no money for school books..."
  
  wn.com/Ottmar_Mergenthaler
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  Robert Bosch
  Robert Bosch (September 23, 1861 - March 12, 1942) was a German industrialist, engineer and inventor, founder of Robert Bosch GmbH.
  Bosch was born in Albeck, a village to the northeast of Ulm in southern Germany. He was the eleventh of twelve children. His parents came from a class of well-situated farmers from the region. His father, a freemason, was unusually well-educated for someone of his class, and placed special importance on a good education for his children.
  From 1869 to 1876, Robert Bosch attended the Realschule (secondary-technical school) in Ulm, and then took an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic.
  After his school and practical education, Bosch spent a further seven years working at diverse companies in Germany, the United States (for Thomas Edison in New York), and the UK (for the German firm Siemens). On November 15, 1886, he opened his own 'Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering' in Stuttgart. A year later, he made a decisive improvement to an unpatented magneto ignition device made by the engine manufacturer Deutz, providing his first business success. The purpose of the device was to generate an electric spark to ignite the air/fuel mixture in a stationary engine. In 1897, Bosch was the first to adapt a magneto to a vehicle engine. In doing so, he solved one of the greatest technical problems faced by the nascent automotive industry. The invention of the first commercially viable high-voltage spark plug as part of a magneto-based ignition system by Robert Bosch's engineer Gottlob Honold in 1902 greatly enhanced the development of the internal combustion engine.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Bosch
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  Roland Asch
  Roland Asch (born 12 October 1950 in Altingen near Tübingen, Germany) is a race car driver who is strongly associated with his home town Ammerbuch near Stuttgart, speaking the local Swabian dialect in interviews and commercials.
  His career started 1973 with slalom before moving to hillclimbing to become German Champion in 1981. After racing also on circuits in the lower Trophy division of the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft, he made his Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM) début at age 34 in 1985. From 1985 to 1994 Asch consistently drove for Mercedes in DTM, moving to the German Supertouring Championship (STW) in 1995 for four years when the DTM faltered.
  At the end of the 1999 and final STW season at the Nürburgring, Asch was accused by some of hitting an opponent intentionally to support his Opel teammate Uwe Alzen.
  Asch was called into the pits for a jump start penalty, yet he was focused on racing like he always is, later stating that his radio had failed. Near the end of the race, he missed a braking point at the last chicane, ran over the grass and back on the track, hitting Audi's Christian Abt. While this incident was mainly considered a race accident, he was punished for ignoring the penalty, and some fans even called him Arsch. Alzen had celebrated immediately after the race, but the championship was given to Abt in November after video evidence was considered by the officials.
  
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  Roland Emmerich
  Roland Emmerich (German: [ˈʁoːlant ˈɛməʁɪç]) (born November 10, 1955) is a German film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films, most of which are Hollywood productions filmed in English, have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide, more than those of any other European directors. His films have grossed just over $1 billion in the United States, making him the country's 14th-highest grossing director of all time. He began his work in the film industry by directing the film The Noah's Ark Principle as part of his university thesis and also co-founded Centropolis Entertainment in 1985 with his sister. He is a collector of art and an active campaigner for the lesbian and gay community, himself being openly gay. He is also a campaigner for an awareness of global warming and equal rights.
  Emmerich has directed many successful films such as Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), The Patriot (2000), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 2012 (2009). Although many of his films have been successful in the box office, his films usually have the tendency of being panned by critics such as Universal Soldier (1992), Godzilla (1998) and 10,000 BC (2008) .
  
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  Rudolf Diesel
  Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (German pronunciation: [ˈʁuːdɔlf ˈkʁɪstjan ˈkaʁl ˈdiːzəl]; March 18, 1858 – September 29, 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the diesel engine.
  Diesel was born in Paris, France in 1858 the second of three children of Elise (née Strobel) and Theodor Diesel. His parents were Bavarian immigrants living in Paris. Theodor Diesel, a bookbinder by trade, left his home town of Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1848 . He met his wife, a daughter of a Nuremberg merchant, in Paris in 1855 and became a leather goods manufacturer there.
  Rudolf Diesel spent his early childhood in France, but as a result of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, his family (as were many other Germans) was forced to leave. They settled in London. Before the war's end in 1871, however, Diesel's mother sent 12-year-old Rudolf to Augsburg to live with his aunt and uncle, Barbara and Christoph Barnickel, to become fluent in German and to visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbsschule (Royal County Trade School), where his uncle taught mathematics.
  
  wn.com/Rudolf_Diesel
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  Saxons
  The Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon: Sahson, Low German: Sassen) were a confederation of Germanic tribes on the North German plain, who during the Middle Ages migrated to the British Isles and formed part of the Anglo-Saxons.
  The Saxons were originally Ingvaeonic tribes, whose earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This area overlapped the area of the Angles, a tribe with which they were frequently closely linked. Saxons participated in the Germanic settlement of Britain during and after the fifth century. It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain, though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon settlers are around two hundred thousand. During the Middle ages, because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration during the Middle Ages, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the North Germanic and Baltic and Finnic peoples, and also upon the Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic people.
  
  wn.com/Saxons
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  Siegfried Einstein
  Siegfried Einstein (30 November 1919 - 25 April 1983) was a German-Jewish poet, novelist, essayist and journalist.
  The son of department store owner Max D. Einstein, Siegfried Einstein was born in the small city of Laupheim in Württemberg. His father was the owner of the city's largest department store. The Einsteins had been residents in Laupheim since the second half of the 18th century.
  On 1 April 1933, the recently elected Nazis organized a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany. The department store Einstein was one of the Jewish businesses in Laupheim picketed by local members of the SA. During this action the shop windows were deliberately smashed.
  Whilst hiking in the mountains in August 1933, Einstein's twenty-year old sister Clärle was killed by lightning in front of his eyes. For the rest of his life he kept the iron tip of her ice axe as a memento.
  During antisemitic actions in Laupheim in 1934, Siegfried Einstein was chased across the school yard and injured by being pelted with stones whereupon, on 26 September 1934, he fled to Switzerland and settled in the municipality of Au in the Canton of St. Gallen. There he went to boarding school. In November 1938, following the so-called Reichskristallnacht, his father was arrested and sent to the concentration camp Dachau. While being held at Dachau concentration camp, he was deprived of his department store following the programme of Aryanization. Einstein's father was subsequently released from the concentration camp, physically and mentally a broken man. In 1940, both his parents managed to emigrate to Switzerland, their German nationality having been taken away, thus rendering them stateless. Siegfried Einstein had already been deprived of German nationality.
  
  wn.com/Siegfried_Einstein
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  Sophie Scholl
  Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine.
  Since the 1970s, Scholl has been celebrated as one of the great German heroes who actively opposed the Third Reich during the Second World War.
  Scholl's father, Robert, was the mayor of Forchtenberg am Kocher when she was born. She was the fourth of six children:
  Scholl was brought up a Lutheran. She entered junior/grade school at the age of seven, learned easily and had a carefree childhood. In 1930, the family moved to Ludwigsburg and then two years later to Ulm where her father had a business consulting office.
  In 1932, Scholl started attending a secondary school for girls. At the age of twelve, she chose to join the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), like most of her classmates, but her initial enthusiasm gradually gave way to criticism. She was aware of the dissenting political views of her father, of friends, and also of some teachers. Political attitude had become an essential criterion in her choice of friends. The arrest of her brothers and friends in 1937 for participating in the German Youth Movement left a strong impression on her.
  
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  Suebi
  The Suebi or Suevi (from Proto-Germanic *swēbaz based on the Proto-Germanic root *swē- meaning "one's own" people, from an Indo-European root *swe-, the third person reflexive pronoun) were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c. 58 BC;
  Some Suebi remained a periodic threat against the Romans on the Rhine, until, toward the end of the empire, the Alamanni, including elements of Suebi, brushed aside Roman defenses and occupied Alsace, and from there Bavaria and Switzerland. A pocket remained in Swabia (an area in southwest Germany whose modern name derives from the ancient name), whereas migrants to Gallaecia (modern Galicia, in Spain, and Northern Portugal) established a kingdom there which lasted for 170 years until its integration into the Visigothic Kingdom.
  In the classical sources, the ethnonym Suebi is used with two different meanings: the specific tribe of Caesar's campaign, "dwelling on the Main", and "broadly, to cover a large number of tribes in central Germany." The broad view is expressed in Tacitus's Germania, a basic written source for the Suebic peoples that states:
  
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  Theodor Heuss
  Theodor Heuss (31 January 1884 – 12 December 1963) was a liberal German politician who served as the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany after World War II from 1949 to 1959. Beside stern Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Heuss' cordial manners largely contributed to the stabilization of democracy in West Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder years.
  Heuss was born in Brackenheim, a small Swabian town near Heilbronn. He studied economics, art history and political science at the universities of Munich and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1905 in Munich with Lujo Brentano as his thesis adviser. On 11 April 1908, he married Elly Heuss-Knapp (1881–1952), with whom he had a son. The priest at the wedding ceremony held in Straßburg was Albert Schweitzer, a close friend of Elly.
  After his studies Heuss worked as a political journalist in Berlin and from 1905 until 1912 presided over the magazine Die Hilfe ("The Help") published by Friedrich Naumann. From 1912 to 1918, he was editor in chief of the Neckarzeitung (Neckar Newspaper) in Heilbronn. In Berlin, he worked as editor for the weekly newsletter Deutsche Politik ("German Politics"). With Naumann, Heuss in 1903 he joined the liberal Free-minded Union, which in 1910 merged in the Progressive People's Party (Fortschrittliche Volkspartei), in which he was engaged until its dissolution in 1918.
  
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  White Rose
  The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.
  The six most recognized members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."
  Another member, Hans Conrad Leipelt, who helped distribute Leaflet 6 in Hamburg, was executed on January 29, 1945 for his participation.
  Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany amongst its greatest heroes, since they opposed the Third Reich in the face of death.
  
  wn.com/White_Rose
• 
  World War I
  World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
  
  wn.com/World_War_I