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Germany!! Read it or DIE!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAH |
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[align=center][size=9][color=darkblue]Germany, Federal Republic of
I INTRODUCTION
Germany, Federal Republic of (German Bundesrepublik Deutschland), major industrialized nation in central Europe, a federal union of 16 states (Länder). Germany has a long, complex history and rich culture, but it did not become a unified nation until 1871. Before that time, Germany had been a confederacy (1815-1867) and, before 1806, a collection of separate and quite different principalities.
Germany is the seventh largest country in area in Europe, with a total area of 356,970 sq km (137,827 sq mi). The country has a varied terrain that ranges from low-lying coastal flats along the North and Baltic seas, to a central area of rolling hills and river valleys, to heavily forested mountains and snow-covered Alps in the south. Several major rivers and canals traverse the country and have helped make it a transportation center.
The country has a total of 83,251,851 people (2002 estimate). Germany is overwhelmingly urban, and most people lead a prosperous, comfortable lifestyle, with adequate leisure time and comprehensive social welfare benefits. Berlin is the capital and largest city, although Bonn, which was the provisional capital of West Germany, is still home to some government offices. The principal language is German, and two-thirds of the people are either Roman Catholic or Protestant.
Germans have made numerous noteworthy contributions to culture. Among the many outstanding German authors, artists, architects, musicians, and philosophers, the composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven are probably the best known the world over. German literary greats include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Thomas Mann.
Germany has a very large and modern industrial economy and is a leading producer of products such as iron and steel, machinery and machine tools, and automobiles. Germany is an economic powerhouse in the European Union (EU), and its currency, the deutsche mark (DM), is among the strongest in the world.
Its central location in Europe has made Germany a crossroads for many peoples, ideas, and armies throughout history. Present-day Germany originated from the AD 843 division of the Carolingian empire, which also included France and a middle section stretching from the North Sea to northern Italy. For centuries, Germany was a collection of states mostly held together as a loose feudal association. From the 16th century on, the German states became increasingly involved in European wars and religious struggles. In the early 19th century, French conquest of the German states started a movement toward German national unification, and in 1815, led by the state of Prussia, the German states formed a confederacy that lasted until 1867.
Once unified under Otto von Bismarck in 1871, Germany experienced rapid industrialization and economic growth. During the early 20th century it embarked on a quest for European dominance, leading it into World War I. Germany’s defeat in 1918 triggered political and economic chaos. An ultranationalist reaction gave rise to the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which gained power in the 1930s and was led by Adolf Hitler. In 1939 Nazi Germany plunged the world into a new global conflict, World War II.
In 1945 the Allied Powers of Britain, the United States, France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) defeated Germany in World War II. The Allies agreed to divide the country into four zones of occupation: the British, American, French, and Soviet zones. When the wartime alliance between the Western powers and the Soviet Union broke up in the late 1940s, the Soviet zone became the Communist-led German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany. The three Western zones formed the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), or West Germany. Control of Germany's historic capital, Berlin, was also divided between the two German states, despite its location deep within East Germany. In 1961 East Germany built the Berlin Wall and elaborate border fortifications to stop the exodus of millions of East Germans to the more prosperous and democratic West Germany. In 1989 the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe was marked by the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of German reunification, which was governed under the West German Basic Law, or constitution. The two Germanys were reunited on October 3, 1990, as the Federal Republic of Germany. Despite its joy at unification, Germany faced a variety of social and economic problems as it tried to absorb millions of new citizens and to blend disparate cultures and institutions.
II LAND AND RESOURCES
Germany ranks as the seventh largest country in Europe, after European Russia (the part of Russia west of the Ural Mountains), France, and Spain. Germany is bounded on the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; on the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; on the south by Austria and Switzerland; and on the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and The Netherlands. Stretching from the Baltic and North seas to the Alps, Germany measures 800 km (500 mi) from north to south; the country extends 600 km (400 mi) from west to east. In addition to coastline and mountains, the varied terrain includes forests, hills, plains, and river valleys. Several navigable rivers traverse the uplands, and canals connect the river systems of the Elbe, Rhine, see Main, and Danube rivers and link the North Sea with the Baltic.
A Natural Regions
Germany has three major natural regions: a lowland plain in the north, an area of uplands in the center, and a mountainous area in the south. The northern lowlands, called the North German Plain, lie along and between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and extend southward into eastern Germany. The lowest point in Germany is sea level along the coast, where there are areas of dunes and marshland. Off the coast are several islands, including the Frisian Islands, Helgoland, and Rügen. The flat area was originally formed by glacial action during the Ice Age and includes an alluvial belt, southwest of Berlin, which is Germany’s richest farming area. Farther west, this belt supported the development of the coal and steel industries of the Ruhr Valley in cities such as Essen and Dortmund. Historically, the north German lowlands have been wide open to invasions, migrations, and trade with Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. East of the Elbe River, they also sustained large-scale agriculture and huge feudal estates once owned by the Prussian aristocratic elite.
The central uplands feature mountain ranges of modest height, separated by river valleys. Navigable rivers facilitated economic development by providing inexpensive transportation before the age of railroads and trucking. This region is located between the latitude of the city of Nürnberg and the Main River in the south and the latitude of Hannover in the north. Much of it is heavily forested and exploited for its timber. The region is marked by an abundance of waterpower. Intense cultivation and industrial development has occurred in cities such as Dresden and Kassel, located in the river valleys.
The mountainous region, or Alpine zone, in the south includes the Swabian and Franconian mountains, the foothills of the Alps, and two large forests, the Black Forest in the southwest and the Bavarian and Bohemian Forest in the east. Germany’s highest point is Zugspitze (2,962 m/9,718 ft) in the Bavarian Alps. Major cities in this area include Stuttgart and Munich. The region has traditionally relied on small-scale agriculture and tourism, but many high-technology industries began to develop there during the 1970s.
B Rivers and Lakes
Rivers have played a major role in German development. The Rhine River flows in a northwesterly direction from Switzerland through much of western Germany and The Netherlands into the North Sea. It is a major European waterway and a pillar of economic development. Its main German tributaries include the Main, Mosel, Neckar, and Ruhr rivers. The Oder River, along the border between Poland and Germany, runs northward and empties into the Baltic; it provides another important path for waterborne freight. The Elbe River originates in the Czech mountains and traverses eastern and western Germany toward the northwest until it empties into the North Sea at the large seaport of Hamburg. The Danube River connects southern Germany with Austria and Eastern Europe. Since the recent construction of the Rhine-Danube Canal, freight can be transported by barge from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Smaller rivers such as the Neisse and Weser also play a significant role as transport routes. There are several large lakes, including the Lake of Constance (Bodensee) in extreme southwest Germany and the glacial moraine lakes of Bavaria, but none of them have rivaled the importance of rivers in German economic development.
C Coastline
Germany’s coastline along the North Sea is characterized by vast stretches of tidal flats and several important seaports, including Hamburg, Bremerhaven, and Emden. Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, is traversed by the vital Kiel Canal, which carries freight between the Baltic and North seas, eliminating the need for a shipping route around Denmark. Major seaports of the German Baltic coast include Kiel and Rostock. The coastline also features recreation areas, some on small islands off both coasts.
D Plant and Animal Life
Once a country of deep forests, Germany today includes mostly areas that have long been cleared. However, forest conservation since the 18th century has preserved large areas of oak, ash, elm, beech, birch, pine, fir, and larch. About one-third of the country is woodland. Of the many animals that once roamed the forests, deer, red foxes, hares, and weasels are still common, but these animals and wilder game such as wild boars, wildcats, and badgers depend increasingly on conservation efforts. Private hunting licenses are extremely expensive, and even fishing in the streams and lakes where edible species abound is not encouraged. Instead, there is a good deal of fish farming, including trout and carp; deer are also commercially produced to satisfy the demand for venison. Many species of songbirds migrate to Germany every year, as do storks, geese, and other larger fowl that fly in over the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. Herring, flounder, cod, and ocean perch are found in coastal waters.
E Natural Resources
The presence of coal and iron ore encouraged German industrial development in the late 19th century. Most of the deposits were found in close proximity to one another, allowing for the convenient use of coal as fuel first to process the iron into steel and then to manufacture products from the steel. The availability of inexpensive transport by water, and later by land, facilitated the growth of manufacturing and encouraged exports. The presence of certain minerals in great quantity, such as potash and salt, permitted the development of a chemical industry, including the production of fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. The availability of wood, petroleum, natural gas, brown coal (also known as lignite), and hydroelectric power further smoothed the path of German industrial progress.
F Climate
Germany has a mostly moderate climate, characterized by cool winters and warm summers. River valleys such as that of the Rhine tend to be humid and somewhat warmer in both winter and summer, whereas mountain areas can be much colder. Precipitation on the average is much heavier in the south, especially along the Alpine slopes, which force incoming weather fronts to rise and shed their moisture in the form of rain and snow.
G Environmental Issues
Germany is located in the middle of other industrial nations whose air and water pollution come into the country with the wind and rain, and in the rivers. Also every summer many automobiles, including those from other European countries, drive across Germany’s autobahn on their way to vacations in southern Europe. Among Germany’s homegrown environmental problems, the most important are probably those connected with industrial overdevelopment and automobile traffic.
A densely settled country, Germany has limited land, air, and water in which to bury and dissipate all the unhealthful and toxic wastes produced by its ever more intensive industrial development. Factory and automobile exhaust pollution is blamed for the widespread death of the forests from acid rain. Agricultural development has produced fertilizer and pesticide runoff into lakes and streams, burdening the groundwater supply. Germany also received some nuclear fallout at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl’ reactor meltdown in Ukraine (Chernobyl’ Accident). Public resistance halted the development of nuclear energy in Germany as people objected to the proposed sites of nuclear plants.
With unification, West Germany inherited the enormous pollution problems of East Germany, whose government had not dealt with serious environmental damage. Among the worst problems were the open remnants from strip mining and the legacy of the chemical industry, both located in southern East Germany. The poisoning of soil and groundwater by uncontrolled industrial and agricultural development required enormous expenditures for cleanup. The burning of brown coal, the only kind of coal abundant in East Germany, has led to health problems, including respiratory ailments and lung and heart disease.
Germany has developed a number of measures to address environmental problems of various sorts, ranging from controls on industrial emissions to identification of additives in food to smog control devices on vehicles. In the 1970s an environmental protest movement developed, and the Green Party—a political party that focuses on environmental issues—was formed. These two events led the major political parties to devote more attention to the environment because they felt they had to compete with the Green Party. The most remarkable result of this increased environmental awareness was the development of an “eco-industry,” a new manufacturing sector that makes pollution-control devices and other environmentally useful equipment. This industry has also produced new jobs, helping counter the fears of both trade unions and existing industries that environmental controls would cost jobs and handicap business. In addition, Germany has ratified various international environmental agreements on air pollution, biodiversity, climate change, endangered species, oceans, the ozone layer, wetlands, and whaling.
III PEOPLE
As is the case in many industrialized countries, the German population has become substantially older on the average since the early 1900s. This is a result of declining birth rates and the shrinking of family size from the large families common in the early 20th century to an average size of 3.5 members per household in the late 1990s. In addition, the numbers of single-parent and one-person households are increasing.
The German population is overwhelmingly urban. In 1994 Germany had 39 cities with more than 200,000 residents, and 12 metropolises with more than 500,000 residents. Three of Germany’s federal states are city-states: Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg. Berlin is the capital and largest city. Germany’s population density is highest in the northwest, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen), which includes Germany’s old industrial heartland, the Ruhr Valley, and a number of large cities. Population density is lower in the former East Germany and in the more rural states of Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), and Bavaria.
A Ethnic Groups
A few ethnic minorities are represented in Germany, including the Danes of northern Schleswig-Holstein and the Sorbs of southeastern Brandenburg, who are descended from the Slavic tribes called the Wends. Foreign residents make up about 9 percent of Germany’s population. The largest group is Turkish, but there are also large numbers of East European refugees, as well as immigrants from European Union countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece.
B Immigration
As a result of being defeated in both World War I and World War II, Germany lost large areas of land. After World War II, many ethnic Germans fled from lost territories and East European countries to what remained of Germany. About 8 million refugees fled from East Prussia, the Czech Sudetenland, and the region between the Oder and Neisse rivers in Poland. About another 3 million ethnic Germans fled from Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, and other parts of Eastern Europe. Most of these ethnic Germans had lived for centuries in Eastern Europe. However, during and after the wars they were driven out, often with considerable violence and the loss of an estimated 2 million German lives. This process began with the collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires in 1918 and the establishment of East European countries such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. The failed attempt of the Nazi Party to reconquer and expand German ethnic dominance by force led to the final flight and expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe.
Once they arrived from their trek to East and West Germany, these millions of ethnic German refugees became integrated rather quickly into German society. Many refugees continued to move from rural to urban areas, and from east to west as 2.5 million East Germans fled to West Germany before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.
A second great population movement began in the 1950s as the rapidly expanding West German economy demanded a larger labor supply. To meet this demand, West Germany looked outside the country to fill labor needs. From 1955, under bilateral treaties with various countries that had underemployment, West Germany brought in thousands of so-called guest workers on limited-term contracts to work for a few years. When the economic boom slowed down in the early 1970s, West Germany stopped foreign recruitment and expected the guest workers to return to their home countries. However, most of them—including large numbers of workers from Turkey and Yugoslavia—did not leave. In addition, many workers had brought their families with them to share in Germany’s opportunities, living standards, and welfare benefits.
During the 1980s and 1990s Germany continued to experience waves of migration. The disintegration of Eastern European Communist regimes led ethnic Germans from as far away as Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, and Romania to seek a new life in Germany, where the Basic Law offers them instant citizenship even if they do not speak the language. The crumbling of Communist rule in East Germany was also accompanied by a massive migration of East Germans to West Germany. Finally, since the late 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people a year from Sri Lanka, Lebanon, West Africa, and other countries have sought refuge in Germany under Article 16 of the Basic Law, which provides asylum for victims of political persecution.
Some Germans have not welcomed these immigrants; many believe that the immigrants came only to participate in Germany’s high living standards. Official responses to these different kinds of immigration challenges have been varied and at times inconsistent, especially since Germany is a federal country and different states and cities have widely varying labor needs and problems. Ethnic German “resettlers” and East German migrants still encounter prejudice even though they are German citizens. Asylum-seekers have been kept in hostels all over the country, barred from jobs and social integration while individual cases for political asylum are examined. This process can take years and has resulted in as many as 97 percent of them being turned away. By 1993 the major political parties agreed to a more restrictive procedure for the admission of asylum-seekers, which reduced their numbers by two-thirds.
C Principal Cities
Germany’s largest cities tend to be either the capitals of former or present states—for example, Berlin, the capital of former Prussia; Munich, the capital of Bavaria; and Dresden, the capital of Saxony (Sachsen). In addition, many of Germany’s largest cities are centers of important super-regional functions or part of industrial areas. For example, the Rhine-Ruhr area, the center of German heavy industry, is a vast population hub with five large cities: Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Dortmund, Essen, and Cologne. Because many people live in adjacent areas or towns and commute to the city, each of these urban centers accounts for far more people than just those living within the city limits.
The cores of many of these large cities and many smaller ones are quite old and have maintained their historic centers with authentically preserved old buildings and cathedrals. Many small towns, such as Rothenburg ob der Tauber in northern Bavaria, boast medieval towers, gates, and parts of their ancient city walls. Many medium-sized and larger cities also pride themselves on a rich, publicly subsidized cultural life of theater, opera, music festivals, and galleries, which add modern refinement to regional traditions.
D Language
The principal and official language of Germany is German, an Indo-European language (see German Language). Standard High German is used for official, educational, and literary purposes. Spoken German, however, differs from High German in the form of dozens of distinctive dialects and simplified street usage. One version, Low German, or Plattdeutsch, resembles Dutch and is spoken in the seaboard areas of the northwest. Southern dialects such as Swabian and Bavarian may be hard to understand for North Germans or for foreign visitors who learned only High German in school. There are small language minorities, such as the Sorbs of southeastern Brandenburg and the Danes of northern Schleswig-Holstein; both of these groups also have some cultural autonomy. The various immigrant populations also retain their separate languages, such as Turkish, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Serbo-Croatian. However, the public schools insist that all children learn German.
E Religion
Religion in Germany plays a fairly small role in society. Church attendance in Germany is much lower than that in the United States. Under German law, all churches are supported by a modest church tax that is collected by the state.
Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion in medieval Germany until the major crises and reformation efforts of the 14th and 15th centuries. After that time, Protestant churches came to power in the majority of principalities of the north, east, and center of the Holy Roman Empire. The actual Reformation began with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses of protest by Martin Luther in 1517. After considerable religious and political conflict, the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 decreed that each ruler of the approximately 300 German principalities could determine the religion of the subjects. The Catholics eventually met the rapid spread of Protestantism with the Counter Reformation, which involved internal church reforms and a stricter interpretation of church doctrine. Religious strife finally culminated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which devastated the country.
Roman Catholics, mainly concentrated in the south, make up about 35 percent of the German population. Protestants, the great majority of whom are Lutherans, make up about 37 percent of the people. Protestants live primarily in the north. Several German Protestant churches form a loosely organized federation called the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). About 4 percent of the German population is Muslim.
Only a very small percentage of Germans are Jewish. Until the 19th century, the Jewish community was segregated and barred from many activities in most German states. In 19th-century Prussia and with the unification of Germany in 1871, German Jews were granted equal status under the law. At that point, German Jews became integrated into cultural and economic life. More than 500,000 Jews lived in Germany in the early 1930s. By the end of World War II in 1945, most of them had been killed by the Nazis or had fled the country. Only about 40,000 Jews, mostly elderly people, lived in Germany in the late 1990s. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, however, some younger East European and Russian Jews began to settle in the larger cities of Germany, particularly Berlin.
F Education
Full-time school attendance in Germany is free and mandatory from age 6 to age 14, after which most children either continue in secondary schools or participate in vocational education until the age of 18. Kindergarten is not part of the public school system, although before unification East Germany had a nearly universal system of childcare facilities. Under the treaty of unification, the East German public education system was required to conform to the model in use in West Germany.
Education in Germany is under the jurisdiction of the individual state governments, which results in a great deal of variety. Most states in the former West Germany have a three-track system that begins with four years of Grundschule (primary school), attended by all children between the ages of 6 and 9. After this period, a child’s further educational program is determined during two “orientation grades” (ages 10 and 11). Those who are university-bound then enter a track of rigorous preparatory secondary education by attending a highly competitive, academic Gymnasium (junior and senior high school). Many Gymnasium students leave school at age 16 to pursue business careers. Others graduate at age 19 after passing a week-long examination called the Abitur. If they pass, they receive a certificate, which is a prerequisite for entering a university. The Gymnasium has three alternative focuses: Greek and Latin, modern languages, and mathematics and science. Only about one-tenth of German students graduate from the Gymnasium.
The overwhelming majority of German students attend either a six-year Realschule (postprimary school), which offers a mixture of business and academic training, or a five-year Hauptschule (general school) followed by further skills training and on-the-job experience in a three-year vocational program, or Berufsschule. From age 14 nearly all Realschule and Hauptschule students, both male and female, enroll in trade apprenticeship programs, which combine training in workshops, factories, or businesses with vocational schooling. Apprentices are supervised by a trade master and must demonstrate their mastery of the trade in examinations.
Since the German three-track system has often been accused of conforming to class distinctions, some states have opted instead for a comprehensive high school system that combines all the tracks within the same institution. The result is somewhat similar to an American high school, but far more competitive. Before unification, East Germany’s polytechnic high schools also provided a comprehensive program. However, since 1990, East German education has moved in the direction of West German models.
The Abitur is required for university entrance but there are alternative routes to it. Some students are permitted to change from one kind of school to another during the course of their education. Such midcourse changes are easiest at comprehensive high schools. Those who opt for three years of vocational training after tenth grade can also go on to specialized trade colleges, or Fachhochschulen. Schools of continuing education for adults, such as the many Volkshochschulen (German for “people’s colleges”), offer a variety of adult education courses and have some programs leading to diplomas.
Enrollments at German universities have quadrupled since the 1960s, which has caused the expansion of many old universities and the building of a number of new ones. Germany has quite a few venerable old universities, such as those of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Munich, Tübingen, and Marburg.
G Way of Life
High living standards, plentiful leisure time (three weeks or more of mandatory paid vacation), and comprehensive social welfare benefits distinguish German society. Germany has a highly urbanized society, with lifestyles that emphasize recreational, leisure, and physical fitness activities. Many Germans enjoy hiking, camping, skiing, and other outdoor pursuits. Soccer is the most popular sport in the nation, and many Germans belong to local soccer clubs. Germans are also known for their love of food, especially rich pastries, veal and pork dishes, and various types of sausages and cheeses. German-made wine and beer are famous all over the world. Also popular are lively social gatherings at outdoor beer or wine gardens or cellar restaurants where wine or beer is stored.
German society has undergone vast changes in recent years. Since the early 1960s, for example, television has homogenized popular culture and brought urban ways of thinking to rural areas. In fact, the rapid spread of automobile ownership in the 1950s and 1960s made rural isolation a thing of the past. The old village communities, whose cultural life was dominated by the parish and the elementary school, have almost disappeared. The one-room schools in which eight grades used to be instructed simultaneously no longer exist. Young women find that most of the traditional barriers to a career of their own choosing, in particular barriers to diversified vocational and higher education, have broken down. Women have also been freed from the constraints of the traditional family roles of motherhood and child rearing by birth control and a greatly lowered birth rate. On average, women in the late 1990s only have 1.5 children, compared to 3.5 children in the early 1900s.
Some people in the former East Germany look back fondly on the days before unification when their way of life was modest but also highly egalitarian. Unification brought greater personal freedom to East Germans, but the capitalistic market economy also brought the heightened competition and a hectic pace of life common in the West. The former East Germany still has considerably lower wage levels and living standards than the more prosperous West Germany. Many large state-owned manufactures and cooperative agricultural enterprises in East Germany did not survive the transformation to a market economy. In the first four years after unification, about three-fourths of the vast sector of public enterprises, both industrial and agricultural, that characterized the communist economy of East Germany were privatized, resulting in extremely high unemployment. The German government invests a great deal of money every year to modernize the infrastructure of roads, transport, communications, and housing in the former East Germany.
H Social Problems
Germany does not have large pockets of poverty or great economic disparity. Crime levels are substantially lower than those in the United States, and the possession of guns is controlled. However, there are substantial numbers of homeless people and problems of violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse. Nonviolent crimes, such as theft and burglary in urban areas, have increased since the 1970s. They occur often enough to make law and order a recurrent political campaign issue.
Since the 1960s violence and crime perpetrated by youths have increased steadily. Disruptive behavior and gang membership characterize some urban secondary schools. Neighborhood youth gangs sometimes engage in vandalism, car theft, and other crimes. Some teens have joined punk and skinhead groups, which may espouse drug use, violence, or racism. In addition, gangs of “soccer rowdies” frequently disrupt games or cause riots afterward.
In the early 1990s the great influx of foreigners, especially illegal aliens and asylum-seekers, coincided with the collapse of the East German Communist regime. Unification brought numerous economic and social problems to Germany, including increased taxes, budget deficits, housing shortages, strikes and demonstrations, unemployment, and rising crime rates. Enormous social changes and economic fears brought xenophobia (fear of foreigners) to the surface. While an angry public focused on the unwelcome strangers and competitors for scarce housing and other benefits, neighborhood youth gangs attacked visible aliens and set fire to their government-assigned housing shelters. At its peak in 1992 this antiforeign violence became the object of extraordinary media concern in Germany and abroad, where it was sometimes interpreted as a sign of German racism and the revival of Nazi activities. Massive counter-demonstrations drew millions of Germans opposed to racism and antiforeign violence.
IV CULTURE
The German people have made many noteworthy contributions to culture. However, the antecedents of contemporary German art, music, and literature are so thoroughly embedded in the broader European intellectual traditions as to defy most attempts to separate any specifically German cultural roots. A visitor, for example, can see abundant evidence of early medieval art and architecture in the many splendid cathedrals, monasteries, and castles of Germany, but these follow the same styles and style periods that are be found in other European countries—Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroque, and so on. German literature and music were similarly part of the larger European culture.
A Literature
From the beginnings of Germany in the 9th century through the Middle Ages, classical Latin was the language of literature and theology in the country. In the 12th and 13th centuries, a vernacular literature appeared, particularly of heroic epics told by wandering minstrel poets. Gottfried von Strassburg wrote Tristan und Isolt (1210) and Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival (about 1210), both of which deal with Christian themes from the French Arthurian cycle. The two most important epics of the Middle Ages—the Nibelungenlied (about 1200-1210) and the Gudrunlied (about 1210)—are based on pagan Germanic traditions.
Two important events—the construction of a printing press using movable type around 1450 by German printer Johannes Gutenberg and the translation of the Bible into German in 1521 by religious reformer Martin Luther—had a profound impact on Western culture as a whole. They also opened new possibilities for a specifically German literature, because they founded a uniform High German language above the regional dialects, and made it accessible to all who could read. Religious unrest and the Thirty Years’ War put an end to most German literary efforts until a revival occurred in the 18th century.
One of the first writers to stand out beyond Germany was 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, whose play Nathan the Wise (1779; translated 1781) argued for religious toleration. Philosopher and literary critic Johann Gottfried von Herder was an important contemporary of Lessing. The revival of German literature was marked by two great literary movements, classicism and romanticism, which were united in the works of Germany’s greatest poets, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The lyrical poetry and novels of Goethe and his drama Faust (1808-1832; translated 1834) and the plays and poems of Schiller brought together classical form and the romantic emotions that marked much of the literature to come. The great inspiration for this golden age of German literature was classical antiquity, which was considered admirable for its balance and perfection. The romantics, on the other hand, often used German folk materials, such as medieval history and the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers. Ancient Greek poetry inspired the romantic poems of Friedrich Hölderlin. The brothers August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Friedrich von Schlegel edited Athenaeum, which was the chief journal of the romantic movement, translated Shakespeare, and produced literary works based on classical antiquity.
In the mid-1800s the new literary schools of naturalism and symbolism developed. Naturalism regarded human behavior as controlled by instinct, social and economic conditions, and biological factors; it rejected free will. Naturalist playwright Gerhart Hauptmann explored hereditary factors that shaped the individual, while the work of symbolist poet Rainer Maria Rilke was marked by mystic lyricism and imagery. Austrian playwright and poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal created aesthetic moods. Great German novelists of the early 1900s include Thomas Mann, author of The Magic Mountain (1924; translated 1927) and other famous novels, and Alfred Döblin, who is best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929; translated 1931). The most influential expressionist writer was Franz Kafka, whose novels and short stories present a world of oppression and despair.
Social criticism was also a common theme in the early 1900s; it provided the primary focus for the novelist Robert Musil and the playwrights Arthur Schnitzler and Frank Wedekind. In 1929 Erich Maria Remarque published the antiwar novel Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), with grimly realistic portraits of World War I. Writers like Hermann Hesse, author of Siddhartha (1922; translated 1951), drew on Indian philosophy and religion. The narrative epic theater of see Bertolt Brecht during the 1920s in Berlin specifically attacked capitalist, bourgeois society. German writing, like many German arts, suffered when the Nazi Party took control of Germany in 1933; led by Thomas Mann, many creative minds left the country and went into exile.
After World War II a new generation of German writers, which called itself Group 47, examined themes of overcoming the Nazi experience. Novelists Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Uwe Johnson led this group. Playwrights Peter Weiss and Peter Handke and poets Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan made notable contributions to German literature in the late 1900s.
B Art and Architecture
Medieval German art and architecture were embedded in the dominant European styles of the time. No monumental painting or sculpture, however, has survived from the earliest period except the 9th-century Carolingian cathedral at Aachen, one of the most important circular buildings in Europe.
The cathedrals of Hildesheim and Magdeburg, the illuminated manuscripts, the sculpture, and the church paintings of the 10th century reflect the spirituality of Byzantine art and architecture. The 11th- and 12th-century cathedrals of Speyer, Goslar, Mainz, and Worms are outstanding examples of the Romanesque style, with rounded arches and dark interiors. The cathedrals of Strasbourg, Trier, and Cologne are fine samples of the Gothic style and its soaring pillars, pointed arches, and flying buttresses. In the 14th century a family of architects and artists, the Parlers, helped spread Gothic designs and sculpture throughout southern Germany, from Ulm to Nürnberg and Prague. During the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, the great German artist Albrecht Dürer created extraordinary woodcuts and copper engravings and pioneered ways of reproducing and disseminating art. Other well-known artists of the time include the painters Matthias Grünewald, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger, and the superb wood altars and sculptures of Tilman Riemenschneider.
Another style, the opulently ornamented baroque, flourished in the Catholic churches and monasteries and the secular palaces of southern Germany and Austria during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its rich ornamentation accompanied the renewed style of the Catholic church service of the Counter Reformation, which was a reaction to the Protestant preference for stripping churches of statuary and paintings of saints. Andreas Schlüter designed the Royal Palace in Berlin in 1706, and architect Balthasar Neumann built the Bishop’s Residence in Würzburg with a great stair hall and a reception room decorated with ceiling paintings.
Outstanding examples of late baroque, or rococo, style include the Wies Church near Munich in southern Bavaria, a vision of light and lightness built by Dominikus Zimmermann, the Benedictine Abbey of Melk on the Danube, and the Royal Zwinger Palace in Dresden, a creation of Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann. Rococo is distinguished by its fanciful use of curves and light, its flowing asymmetric lines, and its pierced shellwork. In the 19th century, great architects such as the painter and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed many of the representative buildings in Berlin, and Gottfried Semper pioneered the revival of Renaissance styles in Dresden and Vienna. Artists of the German romantic period include Caspar David Friedrich, who painted meditative landscapes and seascapes, and Carl Spitzweg, who provided humorous glimpses of small-town life.
At the beginning of the 20th century, German art and architecture developed a range of new styles, beginning with the Jugendstil (see Art Nouveau), whose rich and colorful ornamentation and graceful curves left an indelible imprint on the rest of the century. The Bauhaus school of design, under the direction first of Walter Gropius and later of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, pioneered a functional, severely simple architectural style during the Weimar years. The Bauhaus also attracted great abstract painters such as Paul Klee and famous foreigners such as the Russian Wassily Kandinsky and the American Lyonel Feininger. In addition, the early 1900s produced the bitter caricatures of George Grosz, the tragic graphic art of Käthe Kollwitz, and the expressionist art of groups such as Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Among the leading expressionists were painters Max Beckmann, who produced highly dramatic and energetic paintings, and Emil Nolde, who used contorted brushwork and raw colors to visually shock the viewer. The Nazis pilloried their work as “degenerate art.” As with German literature, nearly every leading figure in art and architecture fled Germany during the Nazi years, and only a few returned after 1945. In postwar Germany, artists of note include sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys and painter Anselm Kiefer, who explored themes of the German cultural crisis under dictatorship and total war.
C Music
The earliest roots of German music lie in monastic chants and religious music. In the 12th century the mystic abbess Hildegard of Bingen wrote stirring compositions and hymns that sought to free musical expression from narrow conventions. From the 12th century to the 14th century, wandering nobles and knights called minnesingers wrote and recited courtly love poems in the tradition of French troubadours and trouvères. Of the approximately 160 known minnesingers from this time period, the most famous are Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar von Hagenau. In addition to the minnesingers, a secular folk music tradition also developed. Some collections of student and vagabond songs survive, including the Carmina Burana verses of 13th-century Bavaria, which in the 20th century were set to music by Carl Orff. From the 14th to the 16th century the German middle class favored the rigid musical style composed by the poets and musicians who belonged to the Meistersinger guild.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, polyphonic music, in which simultaneous melodies were interwoven, arrived in Germany in the form of the Protestant chorale. In contrast to the music of the traditional Catholic service, the rousing Protestant chorale became the participant music of the faithful. Protestant leader Martin Luther himself contributed some of the most popular chorales, such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” to this genre of sacred songs written in the vernacular. Other leading religious composers included Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, and see Johann Pachelbel.
The age of baroque music, with its exuberant ornamentation, began with one of Germany’s greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach’s towering work of the early 1700s was admired for its artistic use of counterpoint. It includes the formal Brandenburg Concertos; four orchestral suites; concertos for violin, keyboard, and various wind instruments; preludes; fugues; and a huge volume of choral works, including his Christmas Oratorio, The Passion of St. Matthew, The Passion of St. John, and many cantatas. He also had two musically talented sons, Johann Christian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who became well-known composers in their own right. Two famous contemporaries of Bach were composers Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel—who wrote more than 40 operas, chamber music, and the famous oratorio Messiah.
By the 1740s princely courts in such cities as Berlin, Dresden, Mannheim, and Vienna had emerged as sponsors of orchestral music and of composers and musicians. In Mannheim, for example, Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz held the post of court composer. In Vienna, the Hungarian Esterházy princes extended their patronage to the immensely gifted and versatile Joseph Haydn, who gave the string quartet, the symphony, and the sonata their classic form. In Salzburg and also in Vienna in the late 1700s, child prodigy and musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart experimented with strains of the dominant Italian musical tradition until he developed his own unmistakable graceful and lyrical style. In his short but brilliant life he produced about 50 symphonies; concertos for piano, violin, and wind instruments; masses; and a requiem. His most famous operas, The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), and lighter operatic pieces, The Magic Flute (1791) and The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782), still dominate the operatic stage.
The age of the French and American revolutions characterized the heroic emotion of the work of Ludwig van Beethoven, a student of Haydn’s in Vienna, who also revolutionized musical form and expression in the early 1800s. He used unorthodox harmonies in classical sonatas and symphonies to inspire exalted moods. His nine symphonies—including the Eroica (begun 1803) and the Symphony no. 9 (1824), with the famous Ode to Joy—five piano concertos, his violin concerto of haunting beauty, an opera, and a large volume of superb chamber music, including his brilliant string quartets, earned Beethoven a reputation as one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition. Another musical innovator of the 1800s, Franz Schubert, created the German lied (art song), usually a piece of romantic or lyrical poetry—some by Goethe—set to music and accompanied by a pianist. Schubert’s lieder cycles, such as The Miller’s Beautiful Daughter (1823), became the model for a long list of other romantic composers, including Hugo Wolf, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert had found Vienna a musical center of the highest creativity and the most refined musical tastes. But there was also a burst of more popular music with the Viennese waltzes of Johann Strauss the Younger and his immortal operettas Die Fledermaus (1874; The Bat) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885; The Gypsy Baron). There were also other operetta masters such as Albert Lortzing and the Hungarian Franz Lehár, whose Merry Widow (1905) brought operetta into the 20th century. Other composers such as the prolific Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler—a genius of romantic expression in his song cycles—continued the Vienna tradition in a serious vein.
Many 19th-century German composers mixed the style of classicism with the less-structured, more spontaneous style of romanticism. Brahms, for example, tended more toward the classical in his four symphonies, his violin and piano concertos, his requiem, and his chamber music. Schumann’s haunting melodies, including symphonies, piano pieces, and chorales, were more on the romantic side. His talented wife, Clara Schumann, also composed romantic pieces. Classicist Felix Mendelssohn produced orchestral, choral, and chamber works.
German opera of the 19th century enjoyed a dramatic evolution at the hands of Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner. Wagner developed a closer linkage between the music and the action on stage by using such devices as the leitmotiv, which presents a musical theme for each important figure or recurrent action. Both Weber and Wagner preferred themes from German history, particularly the Middle Ages. Among Wagner’s best-known operas are The Mastersingers of Nürnberg (completed 1867), The Flying Dutchman (1841), and the four-part epic cycle of the Ring of the Nibelungs (completed 1874). Later, Richard Strauss produced outstanding operas such as Der Rosenkavalier (1911), and Engelbert Humperdinck experimented with operas for children. At the same time, Austrian Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg devised a revolutionary twelve-tone music that abandoned traditional melodies and harmonies for emphasis on rhythm and dissonance. Composer Kurt Weill collaborated with writer Bertolt Brecht on two of the great works of the German popular stage, The Three-Penny Opera (1928; translated 1933) and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930; translated 1956). Germany has also produced a multitude of talented orchestra directors, including Otto Klemperer and Kurt Masur.
As it did in other fields, the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1930s choked off German musical development. Hundreds of musical artists fled Germany during the years of the Third Reich. After the war, only a few new modern composers appeared, notably Karlheinz Stockhausen and his electronic music, and Hans Werner Henze, known for his lyrical modern operas. However, the classical music tradition continues in Germany with the performances and recordings of more than 150 major orchestras, including such world-renowned groups as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.
D Libraries and Museums
German cultural life has flourished in the many cities that were once the capitals of near-independent states. Their rulers sponsored the arts, music, and theater, and established many fine libraries, galleries, and museums that survived long after the dynasties were gone. The kings of Prussia founded the Prussian State Library (now the Berlin State Library-Prussian Cultural Heritage), the National Gallery, and the Museum of Greek and Roman Antiquities in Berlin. In Munich the Bavarian kings founded the Bavarian State Library, the Alte Pinakothek art gallery, and the famous Deutsches Museum, a museum of scientific and technological inventions. The kings of Saxony founded a splendid art collection in the Zwinger Palace in Dresden. In addition, excellent university libraries and many city and monastery libraries exist throughout the country. Records of the Nazi period are located in the Federal Archives in Koblenz and in the Berlin Document Center, which houses 25 million Nazi Party documents. A large number of private archives of businesses and individuals and fine private museums, such as the Wallraf Museum in Cologne, are also found in Germany.
E Contemporary Culture
The German people are very supportive of the arts. Four-fifths of the $2 billion cost of opera performances annually come from public subsidies. Since unification government funding for the arts has been drastically reduced. The cuts have been especially severe in united Berlin. Before 1990 East and West Berlin each supported their respective opera houses with public monies, particularly East Berlin, which supplied cheap tickets for the working class. After unification, Berlin ended up with two great opera houses and the excellent Comic Opera House, but it has only a fraction of the previous funding.
Popular music in Germany also enjoys a large audience. The concerts of German rock groups draw tens of thousands. Germans have their own groups and bands, and have also come to produce fine jazz in some of the big cities. However, much of the music and many of the artists are part of the international music scene. The popular music itself is overwhelmingly of American origin. The same is true of much of the television fare in Germany. Germany has not made much of an effort to limit the market share of American cultural imports.
The cultural inundation from Hollywood has long overwhelmed the native motion-picture industry. German films make up less than 10 percent of those shown in German theaters. The flourishing German film industry of the Weimar years, which produced well-known directors such as Fritz Lang, became a wasteland during and after World War II. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, with the help of government subsidies and television contracts, a few new directors nurtured a modestly successful film industry. Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Jürgen Syberberg, and Margarethe von Trotta were among the new filmmakers honored by the Young German Film Trust and at international film festivals such as those held in Berlin and Mannheim. Most Germans, however, are not familiar with their work.
V ECONOMY
When Germany became a nation in 1871, it was a latecomer in the race toward industrialization, which was dominated by Britain and France. Unification under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck resulted in a boom that made Germany an industrial leader by 1910. Germany’s economic development was based on an alliance of industrial business people with the Prussian aristocracy who controlled much of the land. It emphasized the production of coal and steel, machines and machine tools, chemicals, electronic equipment, ships, and, later, motor vehicles. Well-organized business, labor, and farm associations in league with the government produced a distinctive “organized capitalism,” different from the less regulated capitalism of Britain and the United States. This strong economy carried the country into two world wars and, despite Allied bombing from 1942 to 1945, survived largely intact.
After World War II ended in 1945, the Western powers saw the need to build up European economies in order to resist the threatened encroachment of the Soviet Union and Communism. To this end, the U.S. government in 1947 initiated the European Recovery Program, commonly called the Marshall Plan, which offered generous investment loans to all European countries that had been devastated by the war. Under the stewardship of economics minister Ludwig Erhard, the Marshall Plan helped launch a 20-year economic expansion in West Germany that raised living standards and industrial production far above prewar levels. This recovery is often described as West Germany’s “economic miracle.”
East Germany did not participate in the Marshall Plan and instead built up a Communist economic system. It instituted an economy based on central planning by a state commission that set all the wages and prices. Most private industries and farms were turned into state or cooperative enterprises. East Germany became one of the most industrialized and prosperous Communist countries.
However, after German unification in 1990, the great differences between the West and East German economic systems brought East Germany to near total collapse. Many East German workers abandoned their jobs for superior opportunities in the West, and East German consumers spurned their own products for Western goods. To make matters worse, the overvalued East German currency, the ostmark, was exchanged one-to-one for the West German deutsche mark (DM), whose street value was actually seven to ten times higher. This exchange plunged struggling East German enterprises into the highly competitive West German and international markets without protection. The East German enterprises now had to pay their debts and payrolls in higher-value DM while at the same time losing market share to the superior West German products that were becoming widely available. A wide range of West German goods became available on East German shelves. The Eastern European markets for East German exports disappeared, since many of these countries could not afford to pay in DM for East German goods previously attained by bartering their own products. Many East German enterprises failed. New private and public investments, most of them from West Germany, have since flowed into the former East Germany as its economy was restructured and privatized.
Germany’s economic development after unification had its ups and downs. In particular during a severe recession in 1992 and 1993, economic growth slowed down and, for a while, the economy even shrank somewhat before resuming its modest growth rate of between 1 and 3 percent. Throughout this period, however, Germany continued to pour tens of billions of dollars into the infrastructure of former East Germany, and it will continue to do so for several more years. In just the first seven years after unification, this involved an amount equivalent (in real, uninflated value) of 70 times the Marshall Plan aid to West Germany. In 1993 the eastern growth rate was at a gratifying 9.2 percent, while that of western Germany was only 2.3 percent and the national average was 2.9 percent. Growth in the former East Germany was led by the construction industry, which accounted for one-third of the East’s industrial output. The service sector and light manufacturing followed.
By 1994 the German economy had recovered from its slump. The export sector was the first to expand again, followed by investments and consumption. In spite of the recovery, per capita industrial output in the former East Germany was still only one-third that of the West, although its share of production for export was almost at West German levels. But, compared to other post-Communist economies, East German economic progress was far ahead of such countries as Poland and the Czech Republic. By 1998 economic growth was about 3 percent of GDP annually for Germany as a whole.
Despite higher taxes and some economic problems since unification, the German economy remains strong. Its large and very modern industrial economy has made Germany the economic powerhouse of the European Union (EU). More than one-half of both exports and imports are with EU countries. Its banks are strong in the EU, and the deutsche mark is one of the strongest currencies in Europe.
A Labor
In the past, West Germany had very low unemployment, and East Germany had full employment under its Communist system. In the early 1990s, however, unemployment in Germany increased. This increase was due to a number of problems, including industrial restructuring in former East Germany, declines in export orders brought about by recession in other countries, and monetary policies designed to curb inflation. In early 1997 unemployment hit a postwar high of 12.2 percent, with more than 4 million Germans out of work. In the west, the level was more than 9 percent, while eastern Germany’s rate was about 17 percent. Among the reasons for the sluggishness in job creation were the high wage rate common in Germany and the strong trade unions, which sought to protect existing wages and jobs.
Germany has a history of strong labor unions. The first German unions were founded in 1868 and grew into a mighty political and economic force until the Third Reich took over all labor organization in 1933. After 1945 the unions came back with redoubled force in the West under the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). In 1949 the DGB had 4.8 million members in 16 industrial federations and 101 unions. By 1989, on the eve of unification, there were 7.9 million DGB members. German unification briefly raised this figure by 50 percent before the number of members finally settled at about 9 million. The federations ranged from the powerful metalworkers and autoworkers with 2.7 million members to the leather workers with 22,000 members. Other important DGB federations were the Public Service Union and the Chemical, Paper, and Ceramics Workers. Major labor unions outside the DGB included the White Collar Employees, the Civil Service Union, and the Christian Workers Union.
East Germany meanwhile had organized the state-controlled Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB). At its peak, the FDGB claimed a membership of 9.6 million, including pensioners, students, production workers, office employees, intellectuals, and professionals. The FDGB collapsed at the time of unification, and DGB organizers from the west moved in and offered East German workers their support during the transition to a market economy, which included waves of dismissals, reduced hours, and early retirements. The DGB conducted a series of strikes for higher wages and better working conditions for East German workers, beginning with large strikes of metalworkers and public employees in 1992 and 1993. However, in the mid-1990s wage differentials and lower levels of productivity still left workers in eastern Germany as much as 20 to 40 percent behind those in western Germany in various sectors. With the dismantling of some of the largest East German industrial conglomerates and agricultural collectives, whole regions became depressed areas of high unemployment, especially in the north and northeast.
B Manufacturing and Industry
Manufacturing and industry have long been important to German economic development, although recent global and European trends are forcing changes upon the German economy. Industry helped the country recover economically from World War II and from the unification of East and West Germany. Although the economy has long been moving in the direction of services, manufacturing and industry are still important in the country and accounted for 35 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995. Germany is a leading producer of such products as iron and steel, cement, chemical products, electronics, food and beverages, machinery and machine tools, and motor vehicles.
Large-scale manufacturing enterprises are concentrated in several areas. The most important industrial area encompasses the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which includes the steel-producing Ruhr region. The Ruhr region is one of the most intensely developed industrial areas in the world, and a large majority of Germany’s iron, steel, and bituminous coal comes from this area. Its early and intense development also make this region the equivalent of a rustbelt area in the United States, where traditional manufacturing is in decline and unemployment is high. The area around the confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers forms another major industrial region, comprising the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Mainz, and Offenbach. They produce metals, electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and motor vehicles. To the south, Stuttgart and Munich are also manufacturing hubs. Their products include aircraft, textiles and clothing, office machinery, optical instruments, and beer. Berlin, the Hannover-Brunswick area, and the port cities of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, and Wilhelmshaven are other important industrial centers.
Since unification, East German industry has suffered from a number of problems stemming from the long years when it was protected from international and West German competition. Some industries—such as chemicals and plastics, shipbuilding, textiles, and motor vehicles—lost their markets to superior or less expensive West German or foreign products. All suffered from redundancy of labor, which made it necessary to halve most of the industrial labor force, leading to mass unemployment. Most industrial equipment was antiquated, and it especially lacked the automated and computerized advancements that had swept Western industry in the 1980s. After unification in 1990, Germany broke up most large eastern corporations and transferred them from state ownership into private hands. Some enterprises were taken over by their own managers; most were bought in bits and pieces by West German or foreign investors. By the late 1990s, former East Germany was well on its way in moving from a predominantly manufacturing economy toward an increasingly service-oriented economy.
C Mining
Mining plays a small part in the German economy. Several minerals, however, are produced in sizable quantities. Hard coal deposits are mined in the Ruhr area and the Saarland. Brown coal, also known as lignite, is mined in the foothills of the Harz Mountains; near Cologne; in southeastern Brandenburg; and in central Germany. Before 1990 brown coal satisfied about three-fifths of East Germany’s energy needs, but caused enormous environmental problems. Since unification, East German brown coal extraction has been reduced, and the number of coal miners was cut from 133,000 to 28,000 by 1995. The federal government shut down the least productive East German mines and covered open strip mines with vegetation. However, brown coal continues to supply about one-third of the electricity needs of Germany. In addition, nuclear energy and hard coal, which burns more cleanly than brown coal, are gaining in importance. The German government subsidizes both the hard coal and brown coal industries.
Iron ore prod
J.o.n.n.y. · Wed Jan 04, 2006 @ 12:26am · 4 Comments |
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