Portal:Germany
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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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Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner (née Liszt; 24 December 1837 – 1 April 1930) was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult. She became the second wife of the German composer Richard Wagner, and with him founded the Bayreuth Festival as a showcase for his stage works; after his death she devoted the rest of her life to the promotion of his music and philosophy. Commentators have recognised Cosima as the principal inspiration for Wagner's later works, particularly Parsifal.
In 1857, after a childhood largely spent under the care of her grandmother and with governesses, Cosima married the conductor Hans von Bülow. Although the marriage produced two children, it was largely a loveless union, and in 1863 Cosima began a relationship with Wagner, who was 24 years her senior. They married in 1870; after Wagner's death in 1883 she directed the Bayreuth Festival for more than 20 years, increasing its repertoire to form the Bayreuth canon of ten operas and establishing the festival as a major event in the world of musical theatre.
During her directorship, Cosima opposed theatrical innovations and adhered closely to Wagner's original productions of his works, an approach continued by her successors long after her retirement in 1907. She shared Wagner's convictions of German cultural and racial superiority, and under her influence, Bayreuth became increasingly identified with antisemitism. This was a defining aspect of Bayreuth for decades, into the Nazi era which closely followed her death there in 1930. Thus, although she is widely perceived as the saviour of the festival, her legacy remains controversial. (Full article...)
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Anniversaries for September 21
- 1792 – Birth of poet Johann Peter Eckermann, best known for his Conversations with Goethe
- 1860 – Death of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
- 1869 – The first Dresden Semperoper is destroyed by fire
- 1964 – Death of Otto Grotewohl, Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic
Did you know...
- ... that Goethe used his unrequited love to Maximiliane Brentano as inspiration for his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther?
- ... that Tilman Michael, who is set to be the Metropolitan Opera's chorus master from the 2024/25 season, helped the Oper Frankfurt win multiple awards for operatic choir of the year?
- ... that operatic tenor Walter Kirchhoff was also an officer in the cavalry division of the Imperial German Army?
- ... that a clip of a soft pretzel being cut perfectly in half made the short-lived German game show Schlag den Henssler briefly popular to an international audience?
- ... that Wolfgang Rihm said of the music of his 1987 opera Oedipus: "Sound is a weapon here – or a scalpel?"
- ... that German officials exiled the Samoan king from his own kingdom in 1887?
- ... that a scholar argued that the 2021 German novel About People, which is about the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, encourages "sympathy with rightwing extremists"?
- ... that Johann Joseph Dömling suggested in 1803 that venous blood contained carbon monoxide?
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