Welcome to the Germany Portal!
Willkommen im Deutschland-Portal!
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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...
Selected article
![James FRanck in 1925](https://web.archive.org/web/20230715084232im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/James_Franck_1925.jpg/150px-James_Franck_1925.jpg)
James Franck (German pronunciation: [ˈdʒɛɪ̯ms ˈfʁaŋk] (listen); 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in 1906 and his habilitation in 1911 at the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of professor extraordinarius. He served as a volunteer in the German Army during World War I. He was seriously injured in 1917 in a gas attack and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.
Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became professor ordinarius of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. While there he worked on quantum physics with Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. His work included the Franck–Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom. He promoted the careers of women in physics, notably Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hilde Levi.
After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, Franck resigned his post in protest against the dismissal of fellow academics. He assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a year at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, he moved to the United States, where he worked at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then the University of Chicago. During this period he became interested in photosynthesis.
Franck participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II as Director of the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory. He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which is best known for the compilation of the Franck Report, which recommended that the atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning. (Full article...)
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Anniversaries for July 14
![Johannes Peter Müller](https://web.archive.org/web/20230715084232im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Mueller.Joh..jpg/100px-Mueller.Joh..jpg)
- 1801 – Birth of physiologist Johannes Peter Müller
- 1933 – As part of the Gleichschaltung, the forming of new political parties is declared illegal
Did you know...
- ... that Tambling's 2014 work Missa brevis in B-flat for mixed choir, trumpets, trombones, tubular bells and organ was premiered by 1,400 singers at the Parish Church of St. Mary of the Assumption (pictured) in Landau?
- ... that Michael Huber's translation of Salomon Gessner's works into French made Gessner the best-known German-language poet in Europe before Goethe?
- ... that international opera singer Soňa Červená won the Alfréd Radok Award for Best Actress when she was 83 years old?
- ... that around 1,500 anti-Jewish laws were enacted by Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the Holocaust (victims pictured)?
- ... that in Strauss's Elektra, Aile Asszonyi was said to be convincing as a woman close to madness?
- ... that Katharina von Schnurbein is the European Commission's first coordinator on combatting antisemitism, having served in the role since 2015?
- ... that Dierk Raabe received €2.5 million from the European Research Council to work on Green Steel?
- ... that the 2018 Te Deum for choir by Peter Reulein uses the same instruments including a bandoneon as Palmeri's Misatango, and is inspired by tango, habanera and huapango?
Selected cuisines, dishes and foods
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20230715084232im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Flameukeusche_2.jpg/220px-Flameukeusche_2.jpg)
Flammekueche (Alsatian; Standard German: Flammkuchen), or tarte flambée (French), is a speciality of the region of Alsace, German-speaking Moselle, Baden and the Palatinate. It is composed of bread dough rolled out very thinly in the shape of a rectangle or oval, which is covered with fromage blanc or crème fraîche, thinly sliced onions and lardons.
The name of the dish varies in local dialects; it is called Flàmmeküeche, or Flàmmaküacha in Alsatian, or Flammkuche in Lorraine Franconian - compare (Standard) German Flammkuchen. All these names translate as "pie baked in the flames". Contrary to what the direct translation would suggest, tarte flambée is not flambéed but is cooked in a wood-fired oven. (Full article...)Topics
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- Requests: German Archaeological Institute at Rome , Deutsche Familienversicherung , Dietlof von Arnim-Boitzenburg , Hennes Bender , Eduard Georg von Bethusy-Huc , Jan Philipp Burgard , Ferdinand Heribert von Galen , Dieter Haack , Herbert Helmrich , Hans Katzer , Siegfried Kauder , Matze Knop , Tom Koenigs , Markus Löning , Anke Plättner , Hans Heinrich X. Fürst von Pless , Gerd Poppe , Victor-Emanuel Preusker , Hans Sauer (inventor) , Franz August Schenk von Stauffenberg , Oscar Schneider , Hajo Schumacher , Otto Theodor von Seydewitz , Dorothea Siems , Werner Sonne , Anton Stark , Udo zu Stolberg-Wernigerode , Christoph Strässer , Torsten Sträter , Joseph von Utzschneider , Jürgen Wieshoff , Hans Wilhelmi ,
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- Cleanup: Oberlichtenau, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, Potsdamer Platz
- Translate: Articles needing translation from German Wikipedia
- Stubs: Albersdorf, Thuringia, Gabi Zimmer, Ingo Friedrich, Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann, Berndt Seite, Federal Social Court,
- Update: Deutsches Wörterbuch
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