Germany gained importance as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which was the first "Reich" (this word means "empire"). It was started by Charlemagne who became the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD, and it lasted until 1806, the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1866 Prussia won the war against Austria and their allies. During this time Prussia founded the North German Confederation. The treaty of unification of Germany was made in Versailles after Germany won the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. This began the Second Reich. The biggest state in the new German Empire was Prussia. The rulers were called Kaisers or "German Emperors", but they did not call themselves "Emperors "of" Germany". There were many smaller states in the Empire, but not Austria.
Germany stayed an empire for 50 years. It joined the other European empires in the Scramble for Africa and fought wars to make large parts of Africa and Oceania its colonies. It killed many Nama and Herero people who did not want to be ruled by Germany. Today, those colonies have become seven states: Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and Papua New Guinea.
In World War I, Germany joined Austria-Hungary, and again declared war on France. The war became slow in the west and became trench warfare. Many men were killed on both sides without winning or losing. In the Eastern Front the soldiers fought with the Russian Empire and won there after the Russians gave up. The war ended in 1918 because the Germans could not win in the west and gave up. Germany's emperor also had to give up his power, and most of Germany's African colonies were taken by other European empires. France took Alsace from Germany and Poland got the Danzig corridor. After a revolution, the Second Reich ended, and the democratic Weimar Republic began.
After the war, there were a lot of problems with money in Germany because of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, which made Germany pay for the costs of World War I and the worldwide Great Depression.
The Third Reich was Nazi Germany; it lasted 12 years, from 1933 to 1945. It started after Adolf Hitler became the head of government. On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag (parliament) passed the Enabling Act, which let Hitler's government command the country without help from the Reichstag and the presidency. This gave him total control of the country and the government. Hitler, in effect, became a dictator.
Hitler wanted to unify all Germans in one state and did this by taking over places where Germans lived, such as Austria and Czechoslovakia; Hitler also wanted the land in Poland that Germany had owned before 1918, but Poland refused to give it to him. He then invaded Poland. This started World War II on 1 September 1939. In the beginning of the war, Germany was winning and even successfully invaded France. It managed to take over much of Europe. However, Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and after the Battle of Kursk, the German Eastern Front began a slow retreat until war's end. On 8 May 1945, Germany gave up after Berlin was captured, Hitler had killed himself a week earlier. Because of the war, Germany lost a lot of German land east of the Oder-Neiße line, and for 45 years, Germany was split into West Germany and East Germany. Other events happened during the war in Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust, the mass genocide of Jews and other peoples, for which some Nazis were punished in the Nuremberg Trials.
In 1989 there was a process of reforms in East Germany, which lead to the opening of the Berlin Wall and to the end of socialist rule in Germany. These events are known as the "Wende" or the "Friedliche Revolution" (Peaceful Revolution) in Germany. After that, East Germany joined West Germany in 1990. The new Germany is a part of the European Union.
Germany is a constitutional federal democracy. Its political rules come from the 'constitution' called "Basic Law" ("Grundgesetz"), written by West Germany in 1949. It has a parliamentary system, and the parliament elects the head of government, the Federal Chancellor ("Bundeskanzler"). The current Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel, is a woman who used to live in East Germany.
The people of Germany vote for the parliament, called the "Bundestag" (Federal Assembly), every four years. Government members of the 16 States of Germany ("Bundesländer") work in the "Bundesrat" (Federal Council). The "Bundesrat" can help make some laws.
The head of state is the "Bundespräsident" (Federal President). This person has no real powers but can order elections for the Bundestag. The current president is Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD).
The judiciary branch (the part of German politics that deals with courts) has a "Bundesverfassungsgericht" (Federal Constitutional Court). It can stop any act by the law-makers or other leaders if they feel they go against Germany's constitution.
The opposition parties are the Alliance '90/The Greens, Die Linke, FDP, and the AfD.
Germany is one of the largest countries in Europe. It stretches from the North Sea and Baltic Sea in the north to the high mountains of the Alps in the south. The highest point is the Zugspitze on the Austrian border, at .
Germany's northern part is very low and flat (lowest point: Neuendorf-Sachsenbande at ). In the middle, there are low mountain ranges covered in large forests. Between these and the Alps, there is another plain created by glaciers during the ice ages.
Germany also contains parts of Europe's longest rivers, such as the Rhine (which makes up a part of Germany's western border, while Oder River is on its eastern border), the Danube and the Elbe.
In Germany there are sixteen states ("Bundesländer"):
In these states there are 301 "Kreise" (districts) and 114 independent cities, which do not belong to any district.
Germany has one of the world's largest technologically powerful economies. Bringing West and East Germany together and making their economy work is still taking a long time and costing a lot of money. Germany is the largest economy in Europe and the fourth-largest in the world by nominal gross domestic product (GDP). In September 2011, the inflation rate in Germany was 2.5%. The unemployment rate of Germany was 5.5% as of October 2011.
Germany is one of the G8 countries. The main industry area is the Ruhr area.
Nearly all German companies are small- or medium-sized.
In Germany live mostly Germans and many ethnic minorities. There are at least seven million people from other countries living in Germany. Some have political asylum, some are guest workers ("Gastarbeiter"), and some are their families. Many people from poor or dangerous countries go to Germany for safety. Many others do not get permission to live in Germany.
About 50,000 ethnic Danish people live in Schleswig-Holstein, in the north. About 60,000 Sorbs (a Slavic people) live in Germany too, in Saxony and Brandenburg. About 12,000 people in Germany speak Frisian; this language is the closest living language to English. In northern Germany, people outside towns speak Low Saxon.
Many people have come to Germany from Turkey (about 1.9 million Turks and Kurds). Other small groups of people in Germany are Croats (0.2 million), Italians (0.6 million), Greeks (0.4 million), Russians, and Poles (0.3 million). There are also some ethnic Germans who lived in the old Soviet Union (1.7 million), Poland (0.7 million), and Romania (0.3 million). These people have German passports, so they are not counted as foreigners. A lot of these people do not speak German at home.
Christianity is the biggest religion; Protestants are 38% of the people (mostly in the north) and Catholics are 34% of the people (mostly in the south). There are also many Muslims, while the other people (26.3%) are either not religious, or belong to smaller religious groups. In the eastern regions, the former territory of the GDR (known as the "DDR" in German), only one fifth of the population is religious.