Page 497 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

GERM AN Y , A USTRIA , AND SWITZERLAND  495

GERMANY

By reputation the Germans are a hard-working, efficient, competitive people
and this is borne out by their recent economic success. However, Germany’s
turbulent, divided past and the centuries when it was a patchwork of many tiny
states mean that there are profound regional differences, apparent in a wealth
of fascinating historical sights and colorful local traditions.

Thanks initially to American aid, industry Mainz and Cologne. However, the country
and commerce boomed in West Germany has much more to offer in the way of
following World War II. This so-called scenery, especially its forests, heaths, and
Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) mountains. In the far south, the Alps are
made West Germany a dominant member the major attraction, especially around
of the European Economic Community Lake Constance (the Bodensee), the large
(now the European Union). Demand for lake that borders Austria and Switzerland.
labor led to reliance on migrant workers or
Gastarbeiter (guest workers). As a result, History
over 7 million immigrants now live in Germanic tribes became established in
Germany, the largest number coming from the region sometime during the 1st
Turkey, but many too from Italy, Greece, millennium BC. They clashed with the
and increasingly the former Yugoslavia. Romans, defeating them in AD 9 at the
In the manufacturing city of Stuttgart, Teutoburger forest. Thereafter, the Romans
one inhabitant in three is an immigrant. fixed their frontier along the Rhine and the
Despite its many industrial cities and a Danube. Although relations were often
population of over 80 million, Germany hostile, the Goths and other Germanic
is large enough to also possess a great tribes traded and made alliances with
variety of attractive rural landscapes. For Rome, and as the Roman Empire
many, the Rhine epitomizes Germany, collapsed, these peoples carved out
especially the romantic stretch between kingdoms of their own.

The dome of Berlin’s Reichstag – home to the Bundestag (Federal Parliament)
The Frauenkirche Lutheran church illuminated in the early evening in Dresden, Germany

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