Germany

Germany Background

As Europe's largest economy and most populous nation, Germany remains a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense organizations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945. With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern productivity and wages up to Western standards. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other EU countries introduced a common European exchange currency, the euro.

Germany Information

• Population: 82,424,609 (July 2004 est.)
• Nationality: noun: German(s) adjective: German
• Location:: Central Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, between the Netherlands and Poland, south of Denmark
• Religions:: Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%
• Ethnic Groups:: German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, other 6.1% (made up largely of Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish)
• Land Boundaries:: total: 3,621 km border countries: Austria 784 km, Belgium 167 km, Czech Republic 646 km, Denmark 68 km, France 451 km, Luxembourg 138 km, Netherlands 577 km, Poland 456 km, Switzerland 334 km
• Area: total: 357,021 sq km water: 7,798 sq km land: 349,223 sq km
• Coast Line: 2,389 km
• Climate: temperate and marine; cool, cloudy, wet winters and summers; occasional warm mountain (foehn) wind
• Terrain: lowlands in north, uplands in center, Bavarian Alps in south
• Maritime Claims: territorial sea: 12 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm continental shelf: 200-m depth or to the depth of exploitation
• Land Use: arable land: 33.85% permanent crops: 0.59% other: 65.56% (2001)
• Environmental Issues: emissions from coal-burning utilities and industries contribute to air pollution; acid rain, resulting from sulfur dioxide emissions, is damaging forests; pollution in the Baltic Sea from raw sewage and industrial effluents from rivers in eastern Germany;
• Natural Resources: coal, lignite, natural gas, iron ore, copper, nickel, uranium, potash, salt, construction materials, timber, arable land
• Highways: total: 230,735 km paved: 230,735 km (including 11,515 km of expressways) unpaved: 0 km (1999)
• Railways: total: 46,039 km (20,100 km electrified) standard gauge: 45,801 km 1.435-m gauge (20,084 km electrified) narrow gauge: 214 km 1.000-m gauge (16 km electrified); 24 km 0.750-m gauge (2003)
• Ports & Harbours: Berlin, Bonn, Brake, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Cologne, Dresden, Duisburg, Emden, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Luebeck, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Rostock, Stuttgart
• Airports: 550 (2003 est.)