National name: Bundesrepublik Deutschland

President: Johannes Rau (1999)

Chancellor: Gerhard Schröder (1998)

Area: 356,910 sq. km

Population (2000 est.): 82,797,408 (average annual growth rate: &endash;0.11%); birth rate: 9.4/1000; infant mortality rate: 4.8/1000; density per sq. mi.: 601

Capital and largest city (1995 est.): Berlin (capital since Oct. 3, 1990), 3,471,418

Other large cities (1997): Hamburg, 1,703,800; Munich, 1,251,100; Cologne, 963,300; Frankfurt, 656,200; Essen, 619,600; Dortmund, 601,500; Stuttgart, 592,000; Düsseldorf, 573,100; Bremen, 551,000; Hanover, 526,400; Duisberg, 536,500

Monetary units: Deutsche Mark and euro

Language: German

Ethnicity/race: German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, Italians 0.7%, Greeks 0.4%, Poles 0.4%, Other 4.6%

Religions: Protestant 38%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 1.7%, No religion or other 26.3%

Literacy rate: 99% (1977)

Economic summary GDP/PPP (1998 est.): $1.813 trillion; $22,100 per capita. Real growth rate: 2.7%. Inflation: 0.9%. Unemployment: 10.6%. Labor force: industry 33.7%, agriculture 2.7%, services 63.6%. Exports: $510 billion (f.o.b., 1998 est.): machinery 31%, vehicles 17%, chemicals 13%, metals and manufactures, foodstuffs, textiles (1997). Imports: $426 billion (f.o.b., 1998 est.): machinery 22%, vehicles 10%, chemicals 9%, foodstuffs 8%, textiles, metals (1997). Industries: western: among world's largest and technologically advanced producers of iron, steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery, vehicles, machine tools, electronics, food and beverages; eastern: metal fabrication, chemicals, brown coal, shipbuilding, machine building, food and beverages, textiles, petroleum refining. Agriculture: western&emdash;potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets, fruit, cabbages; cattle, pigs, poultry; eastern&emdash;wheat, rye, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, fruit; pork, beef, chickens, milk, hides. Natural resources: iron ore, coal, potash, timber, lignite, uranium, copper, natural gas, salt, nickel. Major trading partners: EU (France, U.K., Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium-Luxembourg), U.S., Japan.

Geography:
Located in central Europe, Germany is made up of the North German Plain, the Central German Uplands (Mittelgebirge), and the Southern German Highlands. The Bavarian plateau in the southwest averages 488 m above sea level, but it reaches 2,962 m in the Zugspitze Mountains, the highest point in the country. Germany's major rivers are the Danube, the Elbe, the Oder, the Weser, and the Rhine. Germany is about the size of Montana.

Government:
Parliamentary democracy.

History:
The Celts are believed to have been the first inhabitants of Germany. They were followed by German tribes at the end of the 2nd century B.C. German invasions destroyed the declining Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.

For several centuries after Otto the Great was crowned king in 936, German rulers were also usually heads of the Holy Roman Empire.

After the Thirty Years' War (1618&endash;48), Germany was divided into hundreds of small principalities virtually independent of the emperor.

Meanwhile, Prussia was becoming a military power. Bismark unified all of Germany in a series of three wars against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870&endash;71). On Jan. 18, 1871, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

The emperor declared war (World War I) but was defeated. The emperor fled to The Netherlands.

They then had a republic, but the people were not happy because of the suffering after the war, and because they felt other countries were picking on them.

Adolf Hitler, an Austrian, promised a Greater Germany, and was made chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. His invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, started World War II.

Hitler established death camps to get rid of all the Jews. By the end of the war, Hitler's Holocaust had killed 6 million Jews, as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, and the handicapped. They lost the war, and Germany was divided up between the western countries and the USSR, who built the Berlin Wall to stop people escaping from the Russian part of Berlin to the western part, which was better off.

Finally on Oct. 3, 1989, the two halves of Germany got together again, and Germany became a united and sovereign state for the first time since 1945, becoming the second-largest country in Europe after the Soviet Union.

In Sept. 1999, the German Parliament returned to its historic seat in Berlin. Germany is a member of NATO, and of the European Union.