Two seas, three steps and sixteen states
Germany climbs from north to south in three broad steps. The northern third belongs to the North European Plain, flat land drained by north-flowing rivers. It ends at two coasts: the North Sea in the north-west and the Baltic in the north-east. Uplands fill the middle of the country, and the Alps on the southern border hold the Zugspitze, the highest point at 2,962 metres. Nine countries share Germany's borders.
Power is spread out as well. The 16 Länder, or states, run schools, universities, culture and internal security, and their governments help to make federal law through the Bundesrat. They differ enormously in scale. Bavaria covers 70,550 square kilometres and Bremen just 419. Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg are cities that form states of their own.
A nation that arrived late
German states spent centuries inside the Holy Roman Empire, and two events of that age changed Europe. In Mainz, the Gutenberg Bible, the first great book printed in Western Europe from movable metal type, was probably finished late in 1455. On 31 October 1517 Martin Luther published his 95 Theses against the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg, heralding the Reformation.
The empire died under pressure from Napoleon. It had already lost its lands west of the Rhine to France, and in July 1806 several German states left to ally with France. Emperor Francis II gave up the crown on 6 August 1806, 844 years after the empire's foundation.
A German nation state came only in 1871, and it was born on foreign soil. On 18 January, with German forces occupying the town, the Prussian king Wilhelm was proclaimed emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The empire lasted until the November Revolution of 1918, when a republic was proclaimed from a window of the Reichstag.
Crimes, division and a second unity
In 1904 to 1908, when Germany ruled what is now Namibia, historians say about 65,000 Herero and at least 10,000 Nama were killed. In 2021 Germany agreed to call this genocide and to spend 1.1 billion euros, largely on development projects. Ovaherero and Nama authorities sued in Windhoek in 2023, arguing that descendants had been left out of the talks, and in April 2026 the declaration was still unfinished.
Hitler and the Nazi Party took power in January 1933. On the night of 9 November 1938, SA units attacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, claiming at least 100 lives. Germany started the Second World War by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. In the Holocaust six million European Jews were murdered, nearly two of every three. Historians estimate that at least 250,000 Roma were also killed, and that the "euthanasia" programme took 250,000 lives, those of disabled men, women and children. The war caused an estimated 55 million deaths worldwide before Germany surrendered in May 1945. Flight and expulsion from central and eastern Europe then uprooted a commonly estimated 12 to 14 million Germans, about two million of whom died, though those totals may need lowering.
West Germany's Basic Law, signed in Bonn on 23 May 1949, opens with the words "Human dignity shall be inviolable". East Germany followed on 7 October 1949. Construction of the Berlin Wall began on 13 August 1961, and at least 140 people were killed there before it fell. On 9 November 1989, after an official announced new travel rules that would apply immediately, crowds rushed the crossings and guards without clear orders opened the gates. Sixteen million East Germans joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990. In the middle of Berlin, a field of more than 2,700 concrete stelae opened in May 2005 as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
Cars, newcomers and 3,000 loaves
The 2022 census counted about 82.7 million people, some 1.4 million fewer than official estimates had assumed. Growth now depends on immigration. The fertility rate was 1.32 in 2025, and in 2022 deaths outnumbered births by 327,000 while net immigration reached 1,455,000, mostly refugees from Ukraine. By 2025 about 21.8 million people, roughly 26 percent of those in private households, had an immigration history.
Much of that story began with labour agreements, first with Italy in 1955 and then with Turkey on 30 October 1961. About 870,000 people came from Turkey before recruitment stopped in 1973, and some 2.6 million people now have Turkish roots. The old border still shows in the numbers: a 2019 ifo study found about 13.9 million people in the East, roughly the same as in 1905, against a record 68.7 million in the West.
Motor vehicles and parts made up 16.2 percent of exports in 2025, ahead of machinery at 13.8 percent. Small and medium-sized firms were 99.2 percent of enterprises in 2024, with 54.4 percent of employees and 69.4 percent of apprentices.
After Fukushima in 2011 the Bundestag voted to phase out nuclear energy, and the last three plants shut on 15 April 2023. Renewables supplied a preliminary 58.6 percent of electricity fed into the grid in 2025, with coal still at 22.1 percent. Bakers, meanwhile, turn out more than 3,000 types of bread, a culture added to the national register of intangible heritage in 2014.
