Catholic South Germany

Catholic southern Germany and the Rhineland — Bavaria and the old prince-bishoprics. At root it is the Germany that stayed Catholic after the Reformation split the nation, and that entered Bismarck's Protestant-led Reich late and reluctantly in 1871 — so confession and that grudging entry, more than geography, set it against the Prussian north, and it was the core of resistance in the Kulturkampf. Traditionalist, federalist and self-assertive (Bavaria's near-permanent CSU government institutionalises doing things its own way), it is prosperous today on cars, machinery and high-tech around Munich and Stuttgart, and proud of its baroque heritage, its dialects, Oktoberfest and Alpine landscape.

• Existed: 950 CE – present
• Type: Entity