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Willkommen im Deutschland-Portal!
Germany (German: Deutschland), officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north and the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.
Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,578 square kilometres (138,062 sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying entirely in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a very decentralized country. Its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport.
In 1871, Germany became a nation-state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the Revolution of 1918–19, the empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to World War II, and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American, British, and French occupation zones, and East Germany, formed from the western part of the Soviet occupation zone, reduced by the newly established Oder-Neisse line. Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990.
Today, Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor. It is a great power with a strong economy. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993. Read more...
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Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, pronounced [kɔntsɛntʁaˈtsi̯oːnsˌlaːɡɐ ˈʔaʊʃvɪts] ⓘ; also KL Auschwitz or KZ Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question.
After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial of reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. (Full article...)
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Anniversaries for May 10
- 1521 - Death of humanist and satirist Sebastian Brant, author of the Ship of Fools
- 1566 - Death of botanist Leonhart Fuchs
- 1760 - Birth of poet Johann Peter Hebel
- 1878 - Birth of politician Gustav Stresemann, Chancellor of Germany 1923 and recipient of the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize
- 1933 - Nazis and like-minded professors and students start the book burning on the Opernplatz in Berlin
Did you know...
- ... that Oksana Lyniv founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in 2016 and conducted them in thirty concerts across ten music festivals in 2022?
- ... that Thomas Mann insisted on omitting a passage on homoeroticism in the English translation of his work "On the German Republic"?
- ... that Heike Heubach became the first deaf member of the German Bundestag?
- ... that in opposition to his parents, opera star Joseph Schwarz began his career by running away from home to join a band of traveling minstrels?
- ... that Robert Winterberg's 1911 operetta Die Dame in Rot was adapted into English for Broadway?
- ... that in 1933 Nazi sympathisers attempted to kidnap two German-Jewish filmmakers in Liechtenstein?
- ... that in just one night, thousands of books on the experiences and medical care of transgender people in Nazi Germany were burned for being "un-German"?
- ... that Tilmann Köhler directed Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in 2023 with playful "serious games" in which the women win by "wit, cleverness and presence of mind"?
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Sauerbraten (pronounced [ˈzaʊ̯ɐˌbʁaːtn̩] ⓘ) is a traditional German roast of heavily marinated meat. It is regarded as a national dish of Germany, and is frequently served in German-style restaurants internationally. It can be cooked from a variety of meats, most often from beef, but also from chicken, lamb and mutton, pork and horse. Before cooking, the raw meat is marinated for 5 to 15 days in a mixture of wine or vinegar, water, herbs, spices, and seasonings. Usually, tougher cuts of meat, such as rump roast or bottom round of beef, are used, and the long marinating tenderizes the meat. A Sauerbraten dinner is almost always accompanied by a hearty gravy resulting from its roasting and is most often served with potato pancakes (Kartoffelpuffer), potato dumplings (Kartoffelklöße), or Spätzle.
Ingredients used in the marinade, and accompaniments served with sauerbraten, vary across regions. Regional variants of the dish include those from Baden, Franconia, Thuringia, Rhineland, Saarland, Silesia, and Swabia. (Full article...)Topics
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