Portal:Germany
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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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![A man posing in an old uniform](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ec/Hermann_Detzner.jpg/140px-Hermann_Detzner.jpg)
In early 1914, the German government sent Detzner to explore and chart the interior of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the imperial protectorate on the island of New Guinea. When World War I broke out in Europe, he was well into the interior, without radio contact. He refused to surrender to Australian troops when they occupied German New Guinea, concealing himself in the jungle with a band of approximately 20 soldiers. For four years, Detzner and his troops provocatively marched through the bush, singing "Watch on the Rhine" and flying the German Imperial flag. He led at least one expedition from the Huon Peninsula to the north coast, and a second by a mountain route, to attempt an escape to the neutral Dutch colony. He explored areas of the Guinean interior formerly unseen by Europeans and surrendered in full dress uniform, flying the Imperial flag, to Australian forces in January 1919.
Detzner received a hero's welcome when he returned to Germany. More...
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Anniversaries for August 13
![Bayreuth Festspielhaus](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Bayreuthfest.jpg/120px-Bayreuthfest.jpg)
- 1876 – The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opens with the performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen
- 1902 – Birth of engineer Felix Wankel, inventor of the Wankel engine
- 1917 – Death of chemist Eduard Buchner, recipient of the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- 1961 – Construction of the Berlin Wall begins
Did you know...
- ... that a geographer determined the surface area of Carl Friedrich Gauss's brain?
- ... that Zionist activist Georg Kareski defended the Nuremberg Laws in a Nazi newspaper?
- ... that in Ludwig Krug's rendition of Adam and Eve (pictured), an ape mimics Adam eating the apple?
- ... that during his tenure as the manager of Austria's Burgtheater from 1971 to 1976, Gerhard Klingenberg often directed plays with analogies of a divided Europe?
- ... that Albert Einstein wrote to Joseph Petzoldt in 1914 that he had "long shared his convictions", after reading one of his philosophical books?
- ... that the first public performance of the two songs of Arnold Schoenberg's Zwei Gesänge, Op. 1, was met with hostile audience reactions?
- ... that Margaret Carroux's German translation of The Lord of the Rings contains errors introduced by her editor?
- ... 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?
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![Pomeranian cuisine is famous for its great variety of fish dishes, such as herring in cream ("Sahnehering", pictured) and Bismarck herring.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Herring_with_sour_cream_and_onion_and_fried_potato.jpg/220px-Herring_with_sour_cream_and_onion_and_fried_potato.jpg)
Pomeranian cuisine generally refers to dishes typical of the area that once formed the historic Province of Pomerania in northeast Germany and which included Stettin (now Szczecin) and Further Pomerania. It is characterised by ingredients produced by Pomeranian farms, such as swede (Wruken) and sugar beet, by poultry rearing, which has produced the famous Pomeranian goose, by the wealth of fish in the Baltic Sea, rivers and inland lakes of the Pomeranian Lake District, and the abundance of quarry in Pomeranian forests. Pomeranian cuisine is hearty. Several foodstuffs have a particularly important role to play here in the region: potatoes, known as Tüften, prepared in various ways and whose significance is evinced by the existence of a West Pomeranian Potato Museum (Vorpommersches Kartoffelmuseum), Grünkohl and sweet and sour dishes produced, for example, by baking fruit.
Pomeranian farmers were self-sufficient: crops were stored until the following harvest, meat products were preserved in the smoke store of the home, or in the smokeries of larger villages such as Schlawin. Fruit, vegetables, lard and Gänseflomen were preserved by bottling in jars. Syrup was made from the sugar beet itself. (Full article...)Topics
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