Germany

A country that existed as an idea for a thousand years before it existed as a state, and twice tried to remake Europe by force. The Holy Roman Empire was a loose framework of hundreds of principalities, cities and bishoprics rather than a nation, and it was Luther's break with Rome in 1517, printed and distributed in German, that gave the language and the idea their weight. The Thirty Years War killed perhaps a third of the population. Napoleon abolished the empire in 1806 and reduced the hundreds to dozens, and Bismarck unified the rest under Prussia in 1871 through three deliberately provoked wars. The new state industrialised faster than any rival and produced a scientific establishment that dominated physics and chemistry. Defeat in 1918, the Versailles settlement and hyperinflation preceded the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, a war that killed tens of millions, and the industrialised murder of six million Jews and millions of others. The country was divided for forty-one years and reunified in 1990. Postwar Germany built its politics around remembering rather than forgetting, and the Coal and Steel Community with France was the beginning of the European Union. Berlin is the capital. The country has about eighty-four million people, the most in the European Union, and borders nine states. German is spoken natively by more Europeans than any other language. It is the world's third largest exporter and its manufacturing base is unusually decentralised among mid-sized firms. Its federal structure gives sixteen Lander substantial power over education and policing. Printing with movable type began at Mainz around 1450.

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