Germans

Germans
Deutsche

1st row: Martin Luther • Otto von Bismarck • Ludwig van Beethoven • Immanuel Kant • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 2nd row: Johannes Gutenberg • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Johann Sebastian Bach • Richard Wagner • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 3rd row: Friedrich Schiller • Karl Marx • Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm • Konrad Adenauer • Albrecht Dürer 4th row: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz • Karl Benz • Konrad Zuse • Marlene Dietrich • Max Planck 5th row: Angela Merkel • Albert Einstein • Johannes Kepler • Friedrich Nietzsche • Rudolf Diesel
Total population
141.42 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
Germany        66,420,000[2][3][4]
United States 50 000 000 (German ancestry) [5]  Brazil ~5 000 000 (German ancestry) [6]  Canada 3 200 000 (German ancestry) [7]  Argentina 600 000[4]~3,000,000 (Including Volga Germans, and other German ancestries) [8] The  CIS (mainly  Russia and  Kazakhstan) ca. 1 000 000 ethnic German (declining due to emigration) [9][10]  France (predominant ethnic group of Alsace and Moselle) ~1 000 000 (970,000 with German dialects as mother tongue) [11]  Australia 812 000 (German ancestry, incl. 106,524 German-born) [12]  Italy (in South Tyrol) ~500 000 [13][14]  United Kingdom 266 000 (German-born, many by British military based in Germany. German national number 89 000) [15]  Spain 255 000 (German immigrants) [16]  Switzerland 250 000 (German national) [17]  Poland 153 000 (ethnic German) [18]  Chile 150 000 ~ 200,000 (German ancestry)[5]  Hungary 120 344 (ethnic German) [19]  Austria 119 807 (German national) [20]  Israel 100 000 (German citizen) [21]  South Africa 80 000 (German ancestry) [22][23]  Romania 60 000 (ethnic German) [24]  Uruguay 46 000 (German ancestry, incl. 6000 German nationals) [25]  Czech Republic 40 000 (ethnic German) [26]  Bolivia ~40 000 (German speaking Mennonites) [27]  Belgium 38 366 (excludes German-speaking ethnic Belgians) [28]  Norway 37 000 (German immigrant and ancestry) [29]  Ecuador 33 000 (German ancestry) [30]  Namibia 30 000 [31]  Dominican Republic 25 000 (German ancestry) [32]  Denmark 15 000–20 000 [33]  Greece 15 498 (German citizens) [34]  Portugal 15303[citation needed]  Ireland 11 797 [35]  Slovakia 5000–10 000 [36]  Turkmenistan 2700 [37]
Languages
German: High German (Upper German, Central German), Low German (see German dialects)
Religion
Roman Catholic, Protestant (chiefly Lutheran)
Related ethnic groups
Austrians, Swiss Germans, other Germanic peoples

The Germans (Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages.^[38]

Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, about 66–75 million consider themselves Germans.^{[citation needed]} There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry mainly in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, France, Russia, Chile, Poland, Australia and Romania who most likely are not native speakers of German.^[39] Thus, the total number of Germans worldwide lies between 66 and 160 million, depending on the criteria applied (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans, partial German ancestry, etc.).

Today, peoples from countries with a German-speaking majority or significant German-speaking population groups other than Germany, such as Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, have developed their own national identity and usually do not refer to themselves as Germans in a modern context.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 2.1 Origins 2.2 Medieval history 2.3 Early Modern period 2.4 Twentieth century 2.5 1945 to present 3 Genetics 4 Language 5 Geographic distribution 6 Culture 6.1 Literature 6.2 Philosophy 6.3 Science 6.4 Music 6.5 Cinema 6.6 Art 6.7 Architecture 6.8 Religion 6.9 Cuisine 6.10 Sport 7 Nationalism 7.1 Origins 7.2 Unification 7.3 1918–1945 7.4 After 1945 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

Etymology

The word German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc (from diot "people"), referring to the Germanic "language of the people".

The English term "Germans" came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it from a Gallic term for the peoples east of the Rhine that probably meant "neighbour".^[40][41]

History

The Germans are a Germanic people, which as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. From the multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) left a core territory that was to become Germany.

Origins

The area of modern-day Germany in the European Iron Age was divided into the (Celtic) La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the (Germanic) Jastorf culture in Northern Germany.

The Germanic peoples during the Migrations Period came into contact with other peoples; in the case of the populations settling in the territory of modern Germany, they encountered Celts to the south, and Balts and Slavs towards the east.

The Limes Germanicus was breached in AD 260. Migrating Germanic tribes commingled with the local Gallo-Roman populations in what is now Swabia and Bavaria. The migration-period peoples who would coalesce into a "German" ethnicity were the Saxons, Franci, Thuringii, Alamanni and Bavarii. By the 800s, the territory of modern Germany had been united under the rule of Charlemagne. Much of what is now Eastern Germany became Slavonic-speaking (Sorbs and Veleti), after these areas were vacated by Germanic tribes (Vandals, Lombards, Burgundians and Suebi amongst others) which had migrated into the former areas of the Roman Empire.

Medieval history

A German ethnicity emerged in the course of the Middle Ages, under the influence of the unity of Eastern Francia (later Kingdom of Germany) from the 9th century.^{[citation needed]} The process was gradual and lacked any clear definition.

After Christianization, the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers led German expansion and settlement in areas inhabited by Slavs and Balts (Ostsiedlung). Massive German settlement led to their assimilation of Baltic (Old Prussians) and Slavic (Wends) populations, who were exhausted by previous warfare.

At the same time, naval innovations led to a German domination of trade in the Baltic Sea and parts of Eastern Europe through the Hanseatic League. Along the trade routes, Hanseatic trade stations became centers of German culture. German town law (Stadtrecht) was promoted by the presence of large, relatively wealthy German populations and their influence on political power. Thus people who would be considered "Germans", with a common culture, language, and worldview different from that of the surrounding rural peoples, colonized trading towns as far north of present-day Germany as Bergen (in Norway), Stockholm (in Sweden), and Vyborg (now in Russia). The Hanseatic League was not exclusively German in any ethnic sense: many towns who joined the league were outside the Holy Roman Empire and a number of them may only loosely be characterized as German. The Empire was not entirely German either.

Early Modern period

It was only in the late fifteenth century that the Holy Roman Empire came to be called the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. It was not exclusively German, and notably included a sizeable Slavic minority. The Thirty Years' War, a series of conflicts fought mainly in the territory of modern Germany, confirmed the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The Napoleonic Wars gave it its coup de grâce.

Since the Peace of Westphalia, Germany had been "one nation split in many countries" (Kleinstaaterei).^{[citation needed]} The Austrian–Prussian split, confirmed in 1871 when Austria remained outside of the Imperial Germany, was only the most prominent example.

In the nineteenth century, after the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire (of the German nation), Austria and Prussia emerged as two competitors. Austria, trying to remain the dominant power in Central Europe, led the way in the terms of the Congress of Vienna. The Congress of Vienna was essentially conservative, assuring that little would change in Europe and preventing Germany from uniting.^{[citation needed]} The terms of the Congress of Vienna came to a sudden halt following the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War in 1856. This paved the way for German unification in the 1860s.

In 1870, after France attacked Prussia, Prussia and its new allies in Southern Germany (among them Bavaria) were victorious in the Franco-Prussian War. It created the German Empire as a German nation-state, effectively excluding the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy and Liechtenstein. Integrating the German speaking Austrians nevertheless remained a desire for many Germans and Austrians, especially among the liberals, the social democrats and also the Catholics who were a minority in Germany.

During the 19th century in the German territories, rapid population growth due to lower death rates, combined with poverty, spurred millions of Germans to emigrate, chiefly to the United States. Today, roughly 17% of the United States' population (23% of the white population) is of mainly German ancestry.^[42]

Twentieth century

The dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I led to a strong desire of the population of the new Republic of German Austria to be integrated into Germany or Switzerland.^[43] This was, however, prevented by the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, attempted to unite all people they claimed Germans (Volksdeutsche) into one realm, including ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, many of whom had emigrated more than one hundred fifty years before and developed separate cultures in their new lands. This idea was initially welcomed by many ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Austria,^{[citation needed]} Poland, Danzig and western Lithuania. The Swiss resisted the idea. They had viewed themselves as a distinctly separate nation since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.

After World War II, eastern European nations, including areas annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland, expelled ethnic Germans from their territories, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. 14 million ethnic German refugees fled to western Germany and Europe, the United States, Canada, and South America.

After WWII, Austrians increasingly saw themselves as a nation distinct from other German-speaking areas of Europe. Recent polls show that no more than 6% of the German-speaking Austrians consider themselves as "Germans".^[44] Austrian identity was emphasized along with the "first-victim of Nazism" theory.^[45] Today over 80 percent of the Austrians see themselves as an independent nation.^[46]

1945 to present

Between 1950 and 1987, about 1.4 million ethnic Germans and their dependants, mostly from Poland and Romania, arrived in Germany under special provisions of right of return. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain since 1987, 3 million "Aussiedler" – ethnic Germans, mainly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union – took advantage of Germany's law of return to leave the "land of their birth" for Germany.^[47] Approximately 2 million, just from the territories of the former Soviet Union, have resettled in Germany since the late 1980s.^[48] On the other hand, significant numbers of ethnic Germans have moved from Germany to other European countries, especially Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain and Portugal.

Genetics

The predominant Y-chromosome haplogroup among Germans is I1 and R1b followed by R1a; the predominant mitochondrial haplogroup is H, followed by U and T.^[49]

Language

The native language of Germans is German a Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English, Dutch and Scandinavian. Spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers,^[50] German is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union.

There are several dialects of German:

• High German
  • Upper German
    • the Bavarians (ca. 10 million) form the Austro-Bavarian linguistic group, together with those Austrians who speak German and do not live in Vorarlberg and the western Tyrol district of Reutte.
    • the Swabians (ca. 10 million) form the Alemannic group, together with the Alemannic Swiss, Liechtensteiners, Alsatians and Vorarlbergians.
  • Central German dialect group (ca. 45 million)
    • West Central German
      • Central Franconian (Ripuarian, Kölsch), forms a dialectal unity with Luxembourgish
      • Rhine Franconian
        • Hessian
    • East Central German
      • Standard German^[51]
      • Thuringian
      • Upper Saxon
      • High Prussian
      • German Silesian
• Low German (ca. 3–10 million), forms a dialectal unity with Dutch Low Saxon
  • Low Saxon
  • East Low German
• Yiddish dialects of Ashkenazi Jews in Germany and eastern Europe

Geographic distribution

Ethnic Germans form an important minority group in several countries in central and eastern Europe—(Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russia) as well as in Namibia (German Namibian), Brazil (German-Brazilian) (approx. 3% of the population),^[52] Argentina (German-Argentine) (1,5% [6] ~ 7,5% of the population)^[53] and Chile (German-Chilean) (approx. 1% of the population).[7]

Some groups may be classified as Ethnic Germans despite no longer having German as their mother tongue or belonging to a distinct German culture. Until the 1990s, two million Ethnic Germans lived throughout the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia and Kazakhstan.

In the United States 1990 census, 57 million people were fully or partly of German ancestry, forming the largest single ethnic group in the country. States with the highest percentage of Americans of German descent are in the northern Midwest (especially Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan) and the Mid-Atlantic state, Pennsylvania. But Germanic immigrant enclaves existed in many other states (e.g., the German Texans and the Denver, Colorado area) and to a lesser extent, the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington state).

Notable Ethnic German minorities also exist in other Anglosphere countries such as Canada (approx. 10% of the population) and Australia (approx. 4% of the population). As in the United States, most people of German descent in Canada and Australia have almost completely assimilated, culturally and linguistically, into the English-speaking mainstream.

Country	German speaking population (outside Europe)[54]
USA	5,000,000
Brazil	3,000,000
Argentina	500,000
Canada	450,000[54] – 620,000[55]
Australia	110,000
South Africa	75,000 (German expatriate citizens alone)[54]
Chile	40,000
Paraguay	30,000 – 40,000
Namibia	30,000 (German expatriate citizens alone)[54]
Mexico	10,000
Venezuela	10,000

Culture

Literature

German literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages, with the most notable authors of the period being Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Nibelungenlied, whose author remains unknown, is also an important work of the epoch, as is the Thidrekssaga. The fairy tales collections collected and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 19th century became famous throughout the world.

Theologian Luther, who translated the Bible into German, is widely credited for having set the basis for the modern "High German" language. Among the most admired German poets and authors are Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Hoffmann, Brecht, Heine and Schmidt. Nine Germans have won the Nobel Prize in literature: Theodor Mommsen, Paul von Heyse, Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Nelly Sachs, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Herta Müller.

Philosophy

Germany's influence on philosophy is historically significant and many notable German philosophers have helped shape Western philosophy since the Middle Ages. The rise of the modern natural sciences and the related decline of religion raised a series of questions, which recur throughout German philosophy, concerning the relationships between knowledge and faith, reason and emotion, and scientific, ethical, and artistic ways of seeing the world.

German philosophers have helped shape western philosophy from as early as the Middle Ages (Albertus Magnus). Later, Leibniz (17th century) and most importantly Kant played central roles in the history of philosophy. Kantianism inspired the work of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as well as German idealism defended by Fichte and Hegel. Marx and Engels developed communist theory in the second half of the 19th century while Heidegger and Gadamer pursued the tradition of German philosophy in the 20th century. A number of German intellectuals were also influential in sociology, most notably Adorno, Habermas, Horkheimer, Luhmann, Simmel, Tönnies, and Weber. The University of Berlin founded in 1810 by linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt served as an influential model for a number of modern western universities.

In the 21st century Germany has been an important country for the development of contemporary analytic philosophy in continental Europe, along with France, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.^[56]

Science

Germany has been the home of many famous inventors and engineers, such as Johannes Gutenberg, who is credited with the invention of movable type printing in Europe; Hans Geiger, the creator of the Geiger counter; and Konrad Zuse, who built the first computer.^[57] German inventors, engineers and industrialists such as Zeppelin, Daimler, Diesel, Otto, Wankel, Von Braun and Benz helped shape modern automotive and air transportation technology including the beginnings of space travel.^[58][59]

The work of Albert Einstein and Max Planck was crucial to the foundation of modern physics, which Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger developed further.^[60] They were preceded by such key physicists as Hermann von Helmholtz, Joseph von Fraunhofer, and Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, among others. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays, an accomplishment that made him the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.^[61] The Walhalla temple for "laudable and distinguished Germans", features a number of scientists, and is located east of Regensburg, in Bavaria.^[62][63]

Music

In the field of music, Germany claims some of the most renowned classical composers of the world including Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, who marked the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. Other composers of the Austro-German tradition who achieved international fame include Brahms, Wagner, Haydn, Schubert, Händel, Schumann, Liszt, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Johann Strauss II, Bruckner, Mahler, Telemann, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Orff, and most recently, Henze, Lachenmann, and Stockhausen.

As of 2006, Germany is the fifth largest music market in the world^[64] and has exerted a strong influence on Dance and Rock music, and pioneered trance music. Artists such as Herbert Grönemeyer, Scorpions, Rammstein, Nena, Dieter Bohlen, Tokio Hotel and Modern Talking have enjoyed international fame. German musicians and, particularly, the pioneering bands Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk have also contributed to the development of electronic music.^[65] Germany hosts many large rock music festivals annually. The Rock am Ring festival is the largest music festival in Germany, and among the largest in the world. German artists also make up a large percentage of Industrial music acts, which is called Neue Deutsche Härte. Germany hosts some of the largest Goth scenes and festivals in the entire world, with events like Wave-Gothic-Treffen and M'era Luna Festival easily attracting up to 30,000 people. Amongst Germany's famous artists there are various Dutch entertainers, such as Johannes Heesters, Rudi Carell and Sylvie van der Vaart.^[66]

Cinema

German cinema dates back to the very early years of the medium with the work of Max Skladanowsky. It was particularly influential during the years of the Weimar Republic with German expressionists such as Robert Wiene and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. The Nazi era produced mostly propaganda films although the work of Leni Riefenstahl still introduced new aesthetics in film. From the 1960s, New German Cinema directors such as Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder placed West-German cinema back onto the international stage with their often provocative films, while the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft controlled film production in the GDR. More recently, films such as Das Boot (1981), The Never Ending Story (1984) Run Lola Run (1998), Das Experiment (2001), Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Gegen die Wand (Head-on) (2004) and Der Untergang (Downfall) (2004) have enjoyed international success. In 2007 the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film went to F.H. von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others. The Berlin Film Festival, held yearly since 1951, is one of the world's foremost film and cinemas festivals.^[67]

Art

Important German Renaissance painters include Albrecht Altdorfer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Matthias Grünewald, Hans Holbein the Younger and the well-known Albrecht Dürer. The most important Baroque artists from Germany are Cosmas Damian Asam. Further artists are the romantic Caspar David Friedrich, the surrealist Max Ernst, the conceptualist Joseph Beuys or the neo-expressionist Georg Baselitz.

Architecture

Architectural contributions from Germany include the Carolingian and Ottonian styles, important precursors of Romanesque. The region then produced significant works in styles such as the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. The nation was particularly important in the early modern movement through the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus movement identified with Walter Gropius. The Nazis closed these movements and favoured a type of neo-classicism. Since World War II, further important modern and post-modern structures have been built, particularly since the reunification of Berlin.

Religion

64.1 percent of the German population belongs to Christian denominations. 31.4 percent are Roman Catholic, and 32.7 percent are affiliated with Protestantism ^[68] (the figures are known accurately because Germany imposes a church tax on those who disclose a religious affiliation / but there are many people, who are religious but not registered^{[citation needed]}). The North and East is predominantly Protestant, the South and West rather Catholic. Nowadays there is a non-religious majority in Hamburg and the East German states.^[69] Germany formed a substantial part of the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Empire, but was also the source of Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. Historically, Germany had a substantial Jewish population. Only a few thousand people of Jewish origin remained in Germany after the Holocaust, but the German Jewish community now has approximately 100,000 members, many from the former Soviet Union. Germany also has a substantial Muslim minority, most of whom are from Turkey.

German theologians include Luther, Melanchthon, Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, and Rudolf Otto. Also Germany brought up many mystics including Meister Eckhart, Rudolf Steiner, Jakob Boehme, and some popes (e.g. Benedict XVI).

Cuisine

The "home cuisine" differs very much from the "restaurant cuisine". More traditional dishes can be found in restaurants. Cuisine differs also greatly according to regions (in the north people eat fish, in the Rhine region beer is replaced with wine, in Bavaria roasted pork is consumed) and season (in spring people eat white asparagus with ham and sauce hollandaise, in fall people eat green cabbage with a special kind of sausage and mustard and in winter/for Christmas people eat duck or goose with red cabbage, dumplings and brown gravy).

Sport

Sport forms an integral part of German life, as demonstrated by the fact that 27 million Germans are members of a sports club and an additional twelve million pursue such an activity individually.^[70] Football is by far the most popular sport, and the German Football Federation (Deutscher Fußballbund) with more than 6.3 million members is the largest athletic organisation in the country.^[70] It also attracts the greatest audience, with hundreds of thousands of spectators attending Bundesliga matches and millions more watching on television. The other two most popular sports in Germany are marksmanship and tennis represented by the German Marksmen’s Federation and the German Tennis Federation respectively, both including more than a million members. Other popular sports include handball, volleyball, basketball, and ice hockey.^[70] Germany has historically been one of the strongest contenders in the Olympic Games. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Germany finished fifth overall,^[71] whereas in the 2006 Winter Olympics Germany finished first.^[72]

Nationalism

Origins

Pan-Germanism's origins began in the early 19th century following the Napoleonic Wars. The wars launched a new movement that was born in France itself during the French Revolution. Nationalism during the 19th century threatened the old aristocratic regimes. Many ethnic groups of Central and Eastern Europe had been divided for centuries, ruled over by the old Monarchies of the Romanovs and the Habsburgs. Germans, for the most part, had been a loose and disunited people since the Reformation when the Holy Roman Empire was shattered into a patchwork of states. The new German nationalists, mostly young reformers such as Johann Tillmann of East Prussia, sought to unite all the German-speaking and ethnic-German (Volksdeutsche) people.^[73]

Unification

By the 1860s the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire were the two most powerful nations dominated by German-speaking elites. Both sought to expand their influence and territory. The Austrian Empire – like the Holy Roman Empire – was a multi-ethnic state, but German-speaking people there did not have an absolute numerical majority; the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one result of the growing nationalism of other ethnicities especially the Hungarians. Prussia under Otto von Bismarck would ride on the coat-tails of nationalism to unite all of modern-day Germany. The German Empire ("Second Reich") was created in 1871 following the proclamation of Wilhelm I as head of a union of German-speaking states, while disregarding millions of its non-German subjects who desired self-determination from German rule.

There was also a rejection of Roman Catholicism with the Away from Rome! movement calling for German speakers to identify with Lutheran or Old Catholic churches.^[74]

1918–1945

Following the defeat in World War I, influence of German-speaking elites over Central and Eastern Europe was greatly limited. At the treaty of Versailles Germany was substantially reduced in size. Austria-Hungary was split up. Rump-Austria, which to a certain extent corresponded to the German-speaking areas of Austria-Hungary (a complete split into language groups was impossible due to multi-lingual areas and language-exclaves) adopted the name "German-Austria" (German: Deutschösterreich). The name German-Austria was forbidden by the victorious powers of World War I. Volga Germans living in the Soviet Union were interned in gulags or forcibly relocated during the second world war.^[75]

The Heim ins Reich initiative (German: literally Home into the Empire, meaning Back to Reich, see Reich) was a policy pursued by Nazi Germany which attempted to convince people of German descent living outside of Germany (such as Sudetenland) that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into a greater Germany.

After 1945

World War II brought about the decline of Pan-Germanism, much as World War I had led to the demise of Pan-Slavism. The Germans in Central and Eastern Europe were expelled, parts of Germany itself were devastated, and the country was divided, firstly into Russian, French, American, and British zones and then into West Germany and East Germany. To add to the disaster, Germany suffered even larger territorial losses than it did in the First World War, with huge portions of eastern Germany directly annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland.^[76] The scale of the Germans' defeat was unprecedented. Nationalism and Pan-Germanism became almost taboo because they had been used so destructively by the Nazis. Indeed, the word "Volksdeutscher" in reference to ethnic Germans naturalized during WWII later developed into a mild epithet.

However, the reunification of Germany in 1990 revived the old debates. The fear of nationalistic misuse of Pan-Germanism nevertheless remains strong. But the overwhelming majority of Germans today are not chauvinistic in nationalism, but in 2006 and again in 2010, the German National Football Team won third place in the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups, ignited a positive scene of German pride, in fanfare when it comes to sport.^{[citation needed]}

See also

v · d · eGerman people Historical Federal Germans · Imperial Germans · Volksdeutsche Diaspora Europe Central and Eastern Romania Transylvanian Saxons / Landler · Danube / Banat / Satu Mare Swabians · Dobruja · Zipser · Regat · Bessarabia · Bukovina Elsewhere Czech Republic (Sudetenland) · Hungary · Bessarabia · Poland · Russia (Volga · Russian Mennonite) · Slovakia · Slovenia (Gottschee County) · Ukraine (Black Sea · Bukovina · Crimea) Balkans and Southeastern Bulgaria · Caucasus · Croatia · Serbia · Yugoslavia · Turkey (Bosporus) Elsewhere Baltic states · Belgium · Denmark · France · Italy  · Switzerland · United Kingdom Americas Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Canada (Hutterites)  · Chile · Cuba · Jamaica · Mexico · Paraguay · Peru · United States (Pennsylvania Dutch · Texas · Palatines · Puerto Rico) Africa Namibia (Afrikaners) · South Africa (Afrikaners) Asia India · Israel · Kazakhstan · Korea · Kyrgyzstan · Pakistan · Philippines · United Arab Emirates Oceania Australia See also Ostsiedlung · Expulsion of Germans after World War II · German Jews

v · d · e Germany History Timeline · Germanic peoples · Migration Period · Frankish Empire · Holy Roman Empire · East Colonisation · Confederation of the Rhine · German Confederation · North German Confederation · German Empire · During World War I · Weimar Republic · Nazi Germany · During World War II · Divided Germany · Allied occupation and division · Expulsions · East Germany · West Germany · Reunification · Reunified Germany · Military history Geography Administrative divisions (States · Districts) · Cities · Mountains · Islands · Rivers · Lakes Governance Federal Council (Bundesrat) · Federal Assembly (Bundestag) · Federal Convention (Bundesversammlung) · President · Chancellor · Cabinet · Foreign relations · Constitution · Constitutional Court · Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) Politics Elections · Political parties Economy History · Taxation · Deutsche Bundesbank · Automobile industry · Federal Ministry for Economics and Labour · Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development · Frankfurt Stock Exchange · Media · Tourism · Transport Society Demographics · Germans (list) · Education · Religion · Immigration · Human rights · Social issues · Turks in Germany · Crime Culture German culture · Arts · German language · Music · Sport · Smoking Symbols Names · Flag · Coat of arms · National anthem · D-Schild Articles · Category · Portal · WikiProject

References

External links

• Famous Germans
• German, Austrian and Swiss inventors
• Top 100 Germans
• Germans – First arrivals

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Germans