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Germany

created by cpwright

(place) by Segnbora-t (14.7 hr) (print)   ?   I like it! Sun Feb 20 2000 at 6:09:04

European country bordering Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the North Sea and Baltic Sea. First united as one country (rather than a bunch of little duchies and principalities that spoke dialects of the same language) in 1871. From 1945 to 1990 it was divided into NATO-influenced West Germany and Soviet Union-influenced East Germany. It's still working on completely reintegrating the two parts.


(place) by rp (6.2 d) (print)   ?   1 C! I like it! Mon Jul 03 2000 at 8:29:24

When Charlemagne's empire was divided among his sons in 847, France and Germany were the western and eastern part, with a smaller, unstable strip in the middle keeping them apart. The ruler of Germany inherited the right to call himself emperor but as time proceeded, this became little more than a formal title, and Germany became a patchwork of local states with little actual political unity. The common German language remained a strong binding factor, especially when Martin Luther and his fellow religious reformers translated the Bible into German and insisted on the use of German in liturgy.

After 1700, Prussia became a dominant state within Germany, due largely to its strong military character; this process was rounded off in 1871 - after military victory over France - when the Prussian king became the new German emperor and Germany became a de facto political unity for the first time in history. Only a few scraps of German speaking lands remained outside the union (Austria, Switzerland).

The new German state was by far the most powerful in Europe and the Prussian military traditions did not disappear overnight; see World War I and World War II.


(place) by mawa (1.6 y) (print)   ?   I like it! Thu Jul 20 2000 at 8:33:03

Germany has one of the highest standards of living anywhere on this planet. It's rather densely populated. Despite it being only about a fifth the size of Texas or something, there are about 82 million Germans living inside. Lots of USAmericans fail to notice that and they stick to the absurd belief that "Since you're from Germany, you must know my aunt Edna from Ramstein".

We (I'm German) export lots of cars, machines, instruments, steam turbines, power metal, things and stuff into the rest of the world. Actually, we're the biggest exporting country of all. Germany arguably has the world's best educational system, one of the best social systems and one of the most smoothly-working functional democracies. Our power grid is also the most reliable in the world.

Note that we do all that mainly to compensate for our troublesome past. If you're a foreigner, the best thing you can say to a German is "of course you're civilised, and we don't consider you a threat". That will make him thoroughly happy. If you want to say something positive about German music, please restrict your opinions to harmless acts such as Sasha, The Scorpions or German hip-hoppers. Overloud praise of bands such as Rammstein will only send us brooding about whether foreigners liking their dark, clichéd image or ridiculously 'teutonic' vocals do any good to Germany's overseas reputation.


(thing) by freeborn (4.9 y) (print)   ?   1 C! I like it! Sat Jul 29 2000 at 18:51:02


German Metanode

Dictionary In progress
German-English Dictionary
English-German Dictionary

The basics
German(s) | Germany
Deutsch | Deutschland

The Arts & Culture
Berlin Dada
Dada movement
German Expressionism
Sturm und Drang

History and Politics
German history metanode

1934
Austrian economics
Beer Hall Putsch
Berlin Act
Berlin Airlift
Berlin Conference
Bismarck
CIA weekly summaries regarding the Soviet blockade of West Berlin
Fall of the Berlin wall
The German Frontier at Basel: 1942 & 1992
Holocaust
Major parties in Germany
Nazism
Nuremberg trials
President Kennedy's Speech Regarding the Berlin Crisis
   ("Ich bin ein Berliner")
Red Army Faction
Swastika
Weimar Republic
World War I
World War II

Food and Beverages
bier (beer)
German Beer Metanode
Understanding German beer names

Apfelwein German pancake
German white wine
Gründels (Gründels Scale)
Salat
Sauerkraut
too much German white chocolate woman with almonds

Language
The Awful German Language
The Awful German Language Part 2
compound word
Cussing in German
German has shitassed grammar.
German Prepositions
Rechtschreibung (writing rules)
Umlaut
'Zwiebel' is German for 'Onion'

Old High German
High German
Middle High German
Low German

Literature
Erlkoenig, auf Deutsch (poem in German)
Faust
Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain)

Music and Movies
Bands
Echt
Einstürzende Neubauten
Rammstein
Wizo

Songs
German National Anthem (Deutschlandlied)
German Smurf Songs
A German Requiem
Neil Young : After Berlin
Ninth Symphony
Road Movie to Berlin
Streets of Berlin

Movies
Der Himmel Ueber Berlin
summer in berlin
watching Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen in German
Were you ever in a German Scheiss-film?

People
Persons
Adolf Hitler : "der Führer"
Albert Einstein : physicist
Anne of Austria : royalty
aunt Edna from Ramstein : ?
Beethoven (Ludwig van Beethoven) : composer
Deutsch, David & Deutsch, Peter (I know they don't count)
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock : writer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : writer
J.S. Bach : composer
Heinrich Heine : author
Karl Hungus : porn-star/nihilist
Kaspar Hauser : strange
Manfred von Richthofen : pilot
Robert Schumann : composer
Sigmund Freud : pyschiatry
Thomas Mann : author
Wolfgang Hohlbein

Groups
Baader Meinhof - Adreas Baader & Ulrike Meinhof
Besetzer
Brother german
german exchange students
German tourists
Medieval German Tribes
Obsessing over the German guy

Noders - German nationals/residents, past, present, future.
BtS
Dunne
Flow
Mawa
PeterPan
...me

Places
Cities
Berlin
Alexanderplatz
Berlin wall / The Berlin Wall / East Side Gallery
Tacheles
West Berlin
Cologne
Dortmund
Dreieich
Essen
Frankfurt am Main
Heidelberg
Mannheim
Munich
Prussia
Ramstein
Salzburg
Stuttgart
Wien : Vienna

Other
Austria
East Germany (German Democratic Republic, DDR,GDR)
Rhine
Schleswig-Holstein
Spree
Switzerland
West Germany
Steinbruch-Theater
Things
A bug in german birds!
Adidas
Akw : Nuclear power plant
Autobahn
BMW
cheap East German cars
Deutsch Bahn: German Railroad Co.
German Keyboard (Special Alt key characters & accents)
German Shepard
German Steel
German supermarkets
German things
German Toilets
Mercedes
Klo (bathroom)
Nilpferd (hippopotamus)
Scheisswetter (Arschkalt)
Die Schlümpfe (The Smurfs)
U-Bahnhof (subway station)

Other
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Boasts: 'No Man Can Stop Me'
Big German/Japanese porn site
Blame Germany!
Cities in Germany that I have visited
German Computer Sign / German Server Sign / German Internet Sign
Heimlich maneuver
I speak German, so I guess I node something in German
"I was in Austria during the war."
The letter N
Or so the Germans would have us believe
Special Army Forces of the World: Germany
to germany with love
What Do You Know, Deutschland?
what Germans really do best
when having sex in Germany...
Wenn in Deutschland...
Zeige diese Seite auf Deutsch
...even from the East German judge!

(idea) by Myrmidion (7.7 mon) (print)   ?   1 C! I like it! Sun Dec 24 2000 at 2:40:37

When I was doing my writeup on names of Japan I realised that I had seen somewhere that Germany had many names (in other languages). After a bit of research, here is a list derived from postings in sci.lang and faqs:

Germanus, is the latin name, and the one from which the enlgish derives. It may mean "brotherly".

Deutsch comes from a Proto-Germanic word meaning "of the people". Originally was used to distinguish the language from others. the word "Dutch" is derived from this word, and originally meant any northern germanic people. "Pennsylvania Dutch" is now used for this meaning (Pennsylvania = brotherly love?).

Many other languages derive words for Germany from the older version of Deutsch, e.g. Irish tuath, Italian tedesco. yerricde also adds that in Italian, Germania is used as a name for the country, and tedesco for the language.

Teutonic derives from the Teutons, a tribe of Germanic people in Jutland, and may be another derivative of "Deutsch".

French Allemagne and other variants come from another tribe, called the Alemanni (all the men).

Finnish people call them saksa after the saxons.

Slavic people call them nemets, meaning "dumb".


(place) by -brazil- (2.5 y) (print)   ?   I like it! Tue Apr 17 2001 at 8:08:56

One thing that sets Germany apart from most other nations is its astonishing lack of big cities, if you take into account how comparatively small the country is (about 350,000 km^2, slightly smaller than Montana, accoring to the CIA) and how big its population is (over 82 million). In fact, it has only 4 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants (Berlin, Hamburg, München and Cologne)!

How is this possible? Mainly through two factors:

  • There is a relatively large number of medium-sized cities (at least 9 with more than 500,000 but less than 1 million inhabitants), large enough to offer all the conveniences, yet small enough not to become the large sprawls that mar other countries (OK, in some areas they are so close together as to amount to the same thing).
  • (more important) The country is very densely covered with small villages. So densely that the average distance between two neighbouring villages is only 6 kilometers (and much smaller in most areas). In most places with an even average view, you can see at least 3 or 4 of them.
Personally, I think this is a pretty good way to live, although it means that it's not easy to get away from civilization for a while.

(thing) by AT (1.9 mon) (print)   ?   I like it! Tue Oct 02 2001 at 15:31:52

History and Politics
Germany's strategic errors in World War II
Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany

Food and Beverages
German Potato Salad
German Sausages
Kölsch
Reinheitsgebot (beer purity law)