Germany Introduction

Germany (Deutschland in German) is a country in Central Europe and a founding member of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by Denmark, to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic, to the south by Austria and Switzerland, and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Germany Weather

Summers and winters are generally mild, cloudy and wet, central and north. Winters are cold and snowy in the Bavarian Alps in the southwest.

Germany Attractions

Berlin Baden Hamburg Munich Rhineland

Germany History

The state now known as Germany was unified as a modern nation-state only in 1871, when the German Empire, dominated by the Kingdom of Prussia, was forged. This began the German Reich, usually translated as "empire", but also meaning "kingdom", "domain" or "realm."

Early history of the Germanic tribes (100 BC-AD 300) Germanic tribes are believed to have come from Scandinavia, particularly the Jutland Peninsula. They invaded modern-day Germany, the Low Countries, and France, then held sparsely by the Celts, in the 100s BC to the AD 300s. The Celts, who occupied much of Central Europe, were pushed from the lands by the expanding Roman Empire, relocating to Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula. The Celts were further pushed by the Germanic Tribes from Gaul, and eventually fled to the British Isles. Little is known about early Germanic history, except through their interactions with the Roman Empire and archaeological finds.

The Germanic tribes invaded western Europe fighting against the Gallic tribes between 125 to 101 BC but were ejected and destroyed by the Roman general Marius from Roman controlled Italy. It was approximately fifty years until they became powerful and expeditious enough to pose a threat again to Rome under the Suebic king Ariovistus. Julius Caesar ejected the Suebi after they threatened Rome's Gallic allies the Aedui and built the first bridge across the Rhine. Julius Caesar also used German cavalry as auxiliary whenever possible and they aided his greatest victories at Alesia and also at Pharsalus.

Under Augustus the Roman General Drusus began to invade Germany, and it was from this period that the German tribes became familiar with Roman tactics of warfare whilst maintaining their national identity. The German tribes would eventually use this technology to destroy the Roman Empire.

In campaigns from AD 9 to AD 15, German war chief Arminius drove the Romans out of modern-day Germany during an ambush at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, further strengthening the region's military prowess and preserving it from Roman conquest.

Martin Luther would later consider his own fight against the Roman Catholic Church to be a renewal of German liberation from Roman domination through the Vatican. In 1838, drawing further inspiration from the battle, a giant statue was erected near the site of the battle called the Hermannsdenkmal, but archaeologists still dispute the exact site of the battle.

During the period, circa 25 BC to AD 300, the Germans gradually developed into a society that was based more upon agriculture and slightly less dependent on cattle.

Migration Period and Franks (300-843) The migration included the Goths, Vandals, and Franks, among other Germanic and Slavic tribes. The migration may have been triggered by the incursions of the Huns, population pressures, or climate changes.

The Franks were one of several west Germanic federations. The confederation was formed out of Germanic tribes: Salians, Sugambri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chattuarii, Bructeri, Usipetes, Ampsivarii, and Chatti. They entered the late Roman Empire from present central Germany and settled in northern Gaul where they were accepted as a foederati and established a lasting realm (sometimes referred to as Francia) in an area that covers most of modern-day France and the western regions of Germany (Franconia, Rhineland, and Hesse), forming the historic kernel of both these two modern countries.

The conversion to Roman Catholicism of the pagan Frankish king Clovis to better appeal to his conquered Roman subjects was a crucial event in the history of Europe. It resulted in more support from Rome, further solidification of power during the slow, often bloody conversion process, the eventual end to the ancient tribalism of Germany and secured domination over the rival Christian conversion attempts by Arianism. Under the Merovingian and Carolingian kings the Franks formed a new Germanic empire, which replaced the Roman Empire in Western Europe.

In the AD 400s, Euric, the king of the Visigoths, for the first time, wrote and codified the oral tradition of Germanic laws into a constitution (the Code of Euric). Among the laws was the system of choosing successor kings, and some policies, by the electors (delegates), each representing their own region and meeting at grand councils. This would later be continued by the Holy Roman Empire, in which policies on the Reformation would be determined by councils of electors, and even inspired the U.S. Constitution's creation of a House of Representatives, where each region was represented by a delegate, as well as the birth of parliaments in European countries. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (843-1806)

The medieval empire-since 1448 officially called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation ("Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicae") but often referred to as the Holy Roman Empire (or the Old Empire) -stemmed from a division of the Carolingian Empire in 843, which was founded by Charlemagne on 25 December 800, and existed in varying forms until 1806, its territory stretching from the river Eider in the north to the Mediterranean coast in the south.

However, the conversion process did not often come willingly to the ancient tribes of Germany. A devout Roman Catholic with strong links to the Pope, Charlemagne sought to consolidate power through conversion and implant Roman Christianity throughout Germany to maintain power, often forcefully. This lead to the systematic destruction of local pagan sites and the annexation of the native pagan tribes, such as the destruction of the Irminsul (likely within the region of Paderborn) and, perhaps most famously, massacres such as the Bloody Verdict of Verden.

During this period of almost a thousand years, the Holy Roman Empire expanded its influence successfully at home by attempting to stomp out remnants of native paganism and spreading influence abroad with the help of the Roman Catholic Church, the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League to the East.

Under the reign of the Ottonian emperors (919-1024), the Holy Roman Empire absorbed the duchies of Lorraine, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Thuringia and Bavaria. Under the reign of the Salian emperors (1024-1125), the Holy Roman Empire absorbed Italy and Burgundy.

During the long stays of the Hohenstaufen emperors (1138-1254) in Italy, the German princes became stronger and began a successful, mostly peaceful colonization of West Slavic lands, so that the empire's influence increased to eventually include Pomerania and Silesia. The princes became virtually independent rulers within their territories. A period of anarchy, the Great Interregnum (1256-1273), followed the death of the last Hohenstaufen king in 1254 in which there was no emperor and German princes vied for individual advantage. This ended when princes of miscellaneous Houses were elected emperor and strongly relied on the lands of their own family. The edict of the Golden Bull in 1356 provided the basic constitution of the empire up to its dissolution. For three hundred years starting in 1438, the Emperors were elected exclusively from the Austrian Habsburg family.

In 1530, the attempt of the Protestant Reformation of Catholicism failed, and a separate Protestant church was acknowledged as the new state religion in many states of Germany. This led to inter-German strife, the Thirty Years' War (1618) and finally the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which resulted in a drastically enfeebled and politically fractured Germany. The Habsburg emperors relied more on their role as Austrian archdukes and were challenged by the new kingdom of Prussia beginning in 1740. The empire itself was unable to resist the stroke of the Napoleonic Wars, during which the Imperium was overrun and dissolved (1806).

Restoration and revolution (1814-1871) Following Napoleon's fall and the end of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Congress of Vienna convened in 1814 in order to restructure Europe. In Germany, the German Confederation was founded, a loose league of 39 sovereign states. Disagreement with the restoration politics partly led to the lifestyle called Biedermeier and to intellectual liberal movements, which demanded unity and freedom during the Vormärz epoch, each followed by a measure of Metternich's repression of liberal agitation. The Zollverein, a tariff union, profoundly furthered economic unity in the German states.

The German people had been stirred by the ideals of the French revolution. On October 18, 1817, students held a gathering to exchange ideas, the high point of which was the burning of works by authors like Otto of Kotzebue, who were against a united German state. A second such meeting attracted 30,000 people from all social classes and from all regions to the Hambacher celebration. There for the first time, the colors of black, red and gold were chosen to represent the movement, which later became the national colors.

The states were also shaped by the Industrial Revolution, which was the initial step of the growing industrialisation in Europe and contributed to a wave of poverty, causing social uprisings. In light of a series of revolutionary movements in Europe, which in France successfully established a republic, intellectuals and common people started the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. The monarchs initially yielded to the revolutionaries' liberal demands, and an intellectual National Assembly was elected to draw up a constitution for the new Germany, completed in 1849. However, the Prussian king Frederick William IV, who was offered the title of Emperor but with a loss of power, rejected the crown and the constitution. This prompted the demise of the national assembly along with most of the changes from the revolution.

In 1862, conflict between the Prussian King Wilhelm I and the increasingly liberal parliament erupted over military reforms. The king appointed Otto von Bismarck the new Prime Minister of Prussia. Bismarck used the desire for national unification to further the interests of the Prussian monarchy. He successfully waged war on Denmark, on Austria and, finally, on France. The lasting effect of the Austro-Prussian War came to be the division of Austria, formerly the leading state of Germany, from the more western and northern parts.

German Empire (1871-1918) After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the German Empire (Deutsches Kaiserreich) was proclaimed in Versailles on 18 January 1871. As a result, the new empire was a unification of all the scattered parts of Germany but without Austria-Kleindeutschland. After 1888, the Year of Three Emperors, Bismarck was forced by the new emperor, young Wilhelm II, to quit in 1890 due to political and personal differences. The young emperor's foreign policy was opposed to that of Bismarck, who had established a system of alliances in the era called Gründerzeit, securing Germany's position as a great nation and avoiding war for decades. Under Wilhelm II, however, Germany took an imperialistic course, not unlike other powers, but it led to friction with neighbouring countries. Most alliances in which Germany had been previously involved were not renewed, and new alliances excluded the country. Austria and Germany became increasingly isolated.

Beginning in 1884 Germany established several colonies. In the years 1904-1907 German troops killed most of the Herero population of German South-West Africa in the Herero Genocide after a rebellion.

Although not one of the main causes, the assassination of Austria's crown prince triggered World War I on 28 July 1914, which saw Germany as part of the unsuccessful Central Powers in the second-bloodiest conflict of all time against the Allied Powers. In November 1918, the second German Revolution broke out, and Emperor Wilhelm II and all German ruling princes abdicated. An armistice was signed on November 11, putting an end to the war. Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, whose unexpectedly high demands were perceived as humiliating in Germany and as a continuation of the war by other means.

Weimar Republic (1919-1933) After the German Revolution in November 1918, a Republic was proclaimed. That year, the German Communist Party was established by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and in January 1919 the German Workers Party, later known as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party, NSDAP, "Nazis"). On 11 August 1919, the Weimar Constitution came into effect. 1920s Berlin was a vibrant and exciting city that flourished with the activity of artists, intellectuals and scientists, some of them Jews, during the Weimar Republic; many considered it to be the cultural capital of the world during this time.

In a climate of economic hardship due to both the world wide Great Depression and the harsh peace conditions dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, and growing tired with a long succession of more or less unstable governments and continuous coalition changes, the political masses in Germany increasingly lacked identification with their political system of parliamentary democracy. This was exacerbated by a wide-spread right-wing (monarchist, völkische, and Nazi) Dolchstoßlegende, a political myth which claimed the German Revolution was the main reason why Germany had lost the war, decried the Revolutionists as traitors (Novemberverbrecher = November criminals) and the political system born of the Revolution as illegitimate. On the other hand, radical left-wing communists such as the Spartacist League had wanted to abolish what they perceived as a "capitalist rule" in favor of a "Räterepublik" and were thus also in opposition to the existing form of government.

During the years following the Revolution, German voters increasingly supported anti-democratic parties, both right- (monarchists, Nazis) and left-wing (Communists). In the two extraordinary elections of 1932, the Nazis achieved 37.2% and 33.0%, while the Communists achieved 17% in the latter election - half of the parliament were actually anti-democratic, not including smaller parties with questionable credentials in this respect. As a result, democratic moderate parties like the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) were left with a minority.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Germany was not far from a civil war. Paramilitary troops, which were set up by several parties, intimidated voters and seeded violence and anger among the public, who suffered from high unemployment and poverty. Meanwhile, elitists in influential positions, alarmed by the rise of anti-governmental parties, fought amongst themselves and exploited the emergency authority provided in the Weimar Constitution to rule undemocratically by presidential decree.

After a succession of unsuccessful cabinets, on 29 January 1933, President von Hindenburg, seeing little alternative and pushed by advisors, appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.

Third Reich (1933-1945) On 27 February, the Reichstag was set on fire. Basic rights were abrogated under an emergency decree. An Enabling Act gave Hitler's government full legislative power. A centralised totalitarian state was established, no longer based on the rule of democratic law, a policy that Hitler had outlined in his biography 'Mein Kampf.' The new regime made Germany a one-party state by outlawing all oppositional parties and repressing the different-minded parts of the public with the party's own organisations SA and SS, as well as the newly founded state security police Gestapo.

The regime enacted governmental policies directly subjugating many parts of society: Jews, homosexuals, Roma, and the disabled amongst others, labeling them as sub-human and unworthy of participation in German life. As such, people included in these groups were discriminated against, jailed, beaten, killed, forced to move into ghettos, stripped of their jobs and possessions all with explicit authority from the government to do so. After the beginning of WWII, as German troops occupied neighboring countries, the persecution was extended to these territories as well and Slavs and other ethnic groups were added to the list of "undesirables". During the Holocaust Nazi Germany systematically murdered nearly six million Jews and several millions more of Poles and Roma and other people classified as "undesirable" in ghettos, concentration camps, Nazi extermination camps and massacres.

Industry was closely regulated with quotas and requirements in order to shift the economy towards a war production base. Massive public work projects and extensive deficit spending by the state helped to significantly lower the high unemployment rate. This and large welfare programmes are said to be the main factors that kept support of the public even late in the war.

In 1936, German troops entered the demilitarised Rhineland in an attempt to rebuild national self-esteem. Emboldened, Hitler followed from 1938 onwards a policy of expansionism to establish a "Greater Germany", starting with the forced unification with Austria (called "Anschluss") and the annexation of the Sudetes region in Bohemia from Czechoslovakia. The British Prime Minister realised that his policies of appeasement towards Germany were being taken advantage of. To avoid a two-front war, Hitler concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union. In 1939 the question of territories annexed by Poland in 1920 led to hostilities between Germany and Poland, the Germans launching a blitzkrieg against Poland, after which, following British and French war declarations, World War II began in Europe.

Germany quickly gained ground into the surprised Soviet Union, advancing deep into the country and dealing heavy losses to Soviet forces. Germany reached and invaded Stalingrad in late 1942. Germany found Soviet forces prepared to defend Stalingrad and the culminating battle, the Battle of Stalingrad, has since become known as the bloodiest battle in human history.

An intense power struggle erupted between the two forces and Germany held most of the city prior to an encirclement-style counter-attack from the Soviets which resulted in the surrounding of the 6th Army under General Paulus. In January 1943, the remnants of the surrounded army surrendered after weeks of hard fighting without receiving any tangible reinforcement or supply. This began a reconquest and counter-invasion of German territory by the Soviets. Germany took one more gamble on the Russian front, a battle known as "Kursk" in which the largest clash of armoured forces in the history of the world took place. While the Russians suffered more losses than the Germans, the Germans' last great offensive was halted. This was the turning point of the war. The Germans retreated on the Eastern front, followed by the eventual defeat of Germany. On 8 May 1945, Germany surrendered after the Red Army occupied Berlin, where Hitler had committed suicide a week earlier and much of his cabinet had fled.

Division and reunification (1945-1990) The war resulted in the death of several million Germans with a disputed estimate of as many as 12 million people in all, large territorial losses and the ethnic cleansing of approximately 12 to 18 million Germans from Eastern Germany (East Prussia, Silesia, Eastern parts of Pomerania and Brandenburg, Sudetenland) and other parts of Eastern Europe. Two million Germans died as a result of these post-war expulsions. German territory was occupied and annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, and this reduced Germany's land territory drastically. Important German cities, including Breslau (now Wroclaw), Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), and Memel (now Klaipeda) de facto became part of different countries (Poland, Russia and Lithuania, respectively), although the legal situation remained unclear until the end of the Cold War. Their German inhabitants were expelled to western Germany and replaced by ethnic settlers from other countries. To this day, they are not part of Germany. All major and many smaller German cities lay in ruins. Germany and Berlin were occupied and partitioned by the Allies into four military occupation zones - French in the south-west, British in the north-west, American in the south-east, and Soviet in the north-east.

On 23 May 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was established on the territory of the Western occupied zones, with Bonn as its provisional capital. On 7 October 1949 the Soviet Zone was established as the German Democratic Republic (GDR, Deutsche Demokratische Republik), with East Berlin as its capital. In English the two states were known informally as "West Germany" and "East Germany" respectively, though this usage is strongly controversial in Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany declared itself to be identical as a state with the German Empire (Deutsches Reich), and the only legitimate German state. The 1952 Stalin Note proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe but Britain, France, and the United States rejected the offer which they saw as not genuine. Stalin also offered German reunification in its borders as of 1937, if Germany joined the Warsaw Pact, but this was rejected by West Germany. The former German capital, Berlin, a special case, had divided into East Berlin and West Berlin, with West Berlin being completely surrounded by East German territory and yet West Berlin eventually politically integrated with the distant West Germany. The Western occupying powers recognized West Germany as "fully sovereign" on May 5, 1955.

West Germany was allied with the United States, the UK and France. Established as a liberal parliamentary republic with a "social market economy," the country enjoyed prolonged economic growth (Wirtschaftswunder) following the currency reform of June 1948 and U.S. assistance through the Marshall Plan aid (1948-1951). This was a radical change from the situation in the two years while the Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 was in effect (April 1945 - July 1947).

East Germany was at first occupied by and later (May 1955) allied with the USSR. An authoritarian country with a Soviet-style command economy, East Germany soon became the richest, most advanced country in the Eastern bloc, but many of its citizens looked to the West for political freedoms and economic prosperity. The flight of growing numbers of East Germans to the West led to the erection of a fortified border with West Germany and culminated with the construction of the Berlin Wall beginning on 13 August 1961.

Relations between East Germany and West Germany remained icy until the Western Chancellor Willy Brandt launched a highly controversial rapprochement with the East European communist states (Ostpolitik) in the 1970s.

During the summer of 1989, rapid changes took place in East Germany, which ultimately led to German reunification. Growing numbers of East Germans emigrated to West Germany via Hungary after Hungary's reformist government opened its borders. Thousands of East Germans also tried to reach the West by staging sit-ins at West German diplomatic facilities in other East European capitals, especially in Warsaw and Prague. The exodus generated demands within East Germany for political change, and mass demonstrations with eventually hundreds of thousands of people in several cities - particularly in Leipzig - continued to grow.

Faced with civil unrest, East German head of state Erich Honecker was forced to resign on 18 October, and on 9 November, East German authorities unexpectedly allowed East German citizens to travel to West Germany. The events on 9 November that led to the opening of the Wall were actually a series of misunderstandings: Planned as a law that was supposed to quicken the issue of papers for emigration to West Germany after some date in the future, it reached the border forces as a command to allow emigration without any further procedures, taking effect the same day. Still, from a legal point of view, citizens who left East Germany were not allowed to return; however through the media it was published as free travel from and to East Germany - the Berlin Wall was open. Hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity; new crossing points were opened in the Berlin Wall and along the border with West Germany. This led to the acceleration of the process of reforms in East Germany that ended with German reunification on 3 October 1990.

Under the terms of the treaty between West and East Germany, Berlin became the capital of a unified Germany. The Bundestag voted in June 1991 to make Berlin the seat of government. Government offices have been moving progressively to Berlin, and it became the formal seat of the federal government in 1999.

Germany Politics

Legal system Germany has a civil or statute law system based ultimately on Roman law with some references to Germanic law. Legislative power is divided between the Federation and the individual federated states. While criminal law and private law have seen codifications on the national level (in the Strafgesetzbuch and the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch respectively), no such unifying codification exists in administrative law where a lot of the fundamental matters remain in the jurisdiction of the individual federated states. In 1976, with the Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz (VwVfG), the main form of actions of administration were codified. Most federated states have followed this codification. There are a series of specialist supreme courts; for civil and criminal cases the highest court of appeal is the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice), located in Karlsruhe. The courtroom style is inquisitorial.

The Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), also located in Karlsruhe, is the German Supreme Court responsible for constitutional matters, with power of judicial review. It acts as the highest legal authority and ensures that legislative and judicial practice conforms with the Constitution. It acts independently of the other state bodies, but cannot act on its own behalf.

Foreign Relations Germany plays a leading role in the European Union, having a strong alliance with France. Germany is at the forefront of European states seeking to advance the creation of a more unified and capable European political, defence and security apparatus.

Since its establishment on 23 May 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany kept a notably low profile in international relations, both because of its recent history as well as its occupied status. In 1999, however, on the occasion of the NATO war against Yugoslavia, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government broke convention by sending German troops into combat for the first time since World War II.

In 2003, France, Germany and Russia were leaders in the coalition of nations opposing the US-led war in Iraq. Nevertheless, the German government has offered help to the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, but only outside of the war-torn country, mainly by training Iraqi military and police personnel.

Germany and the United States have been close allies since the end of the Second World War. The Marshall plan and continued U.S. support during the rebuilding process after World War II, as well as the significant influence American culture has had on German culture, have crafted a strong bond between Germany and the U.S. that lasts to this day. Not only do the United States and Germany share many cultural similarities but they are also deeply economically interdependent. 8.8% of all German exports are U.S. bound, and U.S.-German trade according to the U.S. Census Bureau totaled $108.2 billion for 2004. An illustration of the strong economic relations between the U.S. and Germany may be the fact that 18.3% of all cars sold in the U.S. were manufactured by German car manufacturers. The largest U.S. community outside the U.S. is Ramstein Air Base, close to the city of Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Together with Japan, India, and Brazil, Germany is currently seeking a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Armed Forces Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, is a defence force with Heer (German Army), Deutsche Marine (German Navy), Luftwaffe (German Air Force), Zentraler Sanitätsdienst (Central Medical Services) and Streitkräftebasis (Joint Service Support Command) branches. It employs some 257,000 soldiers (including women in active fighting branches since 2001) and 125,000 civilians. 50,000 of the soldiers are 18-23-year-old men on national duty, currently for at least 9 months. In peacetime, the Bundeswehr is commanded by the Minister of Defence, currently Franz Josef Jung. If Germany goes to war, the Chancellor becomes commander in chief of the German 'Bundeswehr'.

The military budget has not kept up with the Bundeswehr's mission, which has changed dramatically from protecting Germany's borders against a Soviet invasion into a mobile unit deployed around the world. The funding levels for the Bundeswehr have actually been falling since 1990, when military spending amounted to about 3.5% of gross domestic product. Today, defence spending equals about 1.2% of German GDP, compared to the NATO average of 2.3% and the United States' more than 4%. Critics argue that the current budget of € 24.4 billion is too small to finance the necessary transformation of the Bundeswehr into a well-equipped force ready for NATO and UN led missions abroad. Opponents argue that the transformation from a manpower based army securing the Eastern border to a modernized force with fewer soldiers on the payroll is duly reflected in a lower budget.

Currently, the German military has about 1,180 troops stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina; 2,650 Bundeswehr soldiers are serving in Kosovo; and 3,900 Bundeswehr troops are assisting the US anti-terrorism operation called Enduring Freedom off the Horn of Africa. In Afghanistan, 4,500 German troops currently make up the largest contingent of the NATO-led ISAF force.

Energy policy In 2000, the German SPD-led government along with Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance '90/The Greens), officially announced its intention to phase out the use of nuclear energy. Jürgen Trittin as the Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, reached an agreement with energy companies on the gradual shut down of the country's nineteen nuclear power plants and a cessation of civil usage of nuclear power by 2020.

In 1999, electricity production in Germany was powered by coal (47%), nuclear power (30%), natural gas (14%), renewable sources (including hydro, wind and solar power) (6%), and oil (2%) ([5]). As for energy consumption, oil accounted for 41% of the total. At the World climate conference, the German government announced a carbon dioxide reduction target of 25% by the year 2005 as compared to 1990, to protect global climate.

In 2005, the German government reached a controversial agreement with Russia in building a gas pipeline at the bottom of the Baltic Sea directly from Russia to Germany.