Welcome to the Germany Portal!
Willkommen im Deutschland-Portal!
Germany (German: Deutschland), officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north and the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.
Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,578 square kilometres (138,062 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying entirely in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a very decentralized country. Its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport.
In 1871, Germany became a nation-state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the Revolution of 1918–19, the empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to World War II, and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American, British, and French occupation zones, and East Germany, formed from the western part of the Soviet occupation zone, reduced by the newly established Oder-Neisse line. Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990.
Today, Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor. It is a great power with a strong economy. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993. Read more...
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Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in the Pomeranian town of Greifswald at the Baltic Sea, where he began his studies in art as a young man. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization". More...
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Anniversaries for June 30
- 1893 – Birth of politician Walter Ulbricht
- 1905 – Albert Einstein publishes On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and introduces special relativity
- 1934 – In the Night of the Long Knives, the leadership of the SA is killed or arrested
- 1975 – Birth of Formula One racing driver Ralf Schumacher (pictured)
Did you know...
- ... that Samuel Kummer chose for his first recital as the organist of the restored Frauenkirche in Dresden music by Bach, Brahms, Max Reger, Louis Vierne, and himself?
- ... that the Nazis killed more than fifty Dutch nationals in retaliation for the assassinations of Hendrik Seyffardt and Hermannus Reydon by the Dutch resistance?
- ... that over the course of several decades, the missionaries of New Zealand's German Mission House failed to convert a single person?
- ... that German factory worker Julius Welschof now plays in the National Football League?
- ... that Peter Demetz, who taught German literature at Yale University from 1956 to 1991, was born in Prague where he was persecuted under the Nazis and escaped the Communist regime in 1949?
- ... that the Lutheran St. Trinitatis in Wolfenbüttel, consecrated in 1719, is a Baroque church with a facade recalling that of a palace?
- ... that Romani Holocaust survivor Philomena Franz wrote about her deportation to Auschwitz, internment in Ravensbrück, escape from a camp near Wittenberge, and concealment by a farmer?
- ... that baritone Liviu Holender chose lieder by five composers whose music was banned by the Nazis—Schreker, Zemlinsky, Mahler, Korngold and Schönberg—for a recital at the Oper Frankfurt?
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- Requests: Columbiahalle , German Archaeological Institute at Rome , Deutsche Familienversicherung , Dietlof von Arnim-Boitzenburg , Rolf von Bargen , Micky Beisenherz , Hennes Bender , Georg Bernhard (1875–1944), Eduard Georg von Bethusy-Huc , Rolf Brandt (1886–1953), Jan Philipp Burgard , Georg Arbogast von und zu Franckenstein , Georg Gafron , Ferdinand Heribert von Galen , Gundula Gause , Karl-Heinz Hagen , Herbert Helmrich , Nils von der Heyde , Monty Jacobs (1875–1945), Hans Katzer , Siegfried Kauder , Matze Knop , Wolfgang Kryszohn , Claus Larass , Isidor Levy (1852–1929), Markus Löning , Anke Plättner , Hans Heinrich X. Fürst von Pless , Gerd Poppe , Victor-Emanuel Preusker , Günter Prinz , Hans Sauer (inventor) , Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg , Paul Schlesinger (1878-1928),Oscar Schneider , Hajo Schumacher , Otto Theodor von Seydewitz , Dorothea Siems , Werner Sonne , Anton Stark , Udo zu Stolberg-Wernigerode , Christoph Strässer , Torsten Sträter , Joseph von Utzschneider , Jürgen Wieshoff , Hans Wilhelmi , Alexandra Würzbach
- Unreferenced: Unreferenced BLPs, Bundesautobahn 93, Benjamin Trinks, Steeler (German band), Amelie Beese, Zoologisches Museum in Kiel, Emil Krebs, Prussian semaphore system, Partenstein, Peter Krieg, Porsche 597, Christa Bauch, Curt Cress, Stefan Beuse
- Cleanup: 53541 issues in total as of 2024-03-03
- Translate: Articles needing translation from German Wikipedia
- Stubs: Albersdorf, Thuringia, Ingo Friedrich, Berndt Seite, Federal Social Court; 113 articles in Category:German MEP stubs
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- Portal maintenance: Update News, Did you know, announcements and the todo list
- Orphans: Orphaned articles in Germany
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