Germany FAQs

Official language: German
Capital: Berlin
Form of Government: Federal Republic
Largest City: Berlin
Chancellor: Angela Merkel
President: Joachim Gauck
Area: 137,826 sq. miles (356,970 sq.km)
about the size of Montana
Population: 2012 estimate 80,399,300
Land use: 54.1% farming, 29.4% forest,11.8% built-up areas,
roads and railways, 2.2% water, 2.5% other.
Natural resources: iron ore, coal, timber, copper, natural gas, salt.
Currency: Euro (€)

DID YOU KNOW...
• ...that outside of Europe, the largest German speaking communities are to be found in the USA (with the largest concentration of German speakers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, and Indiana; Amish, Hutterites and some Mennonites also speak dialect of German) and in Brazil, where millions of Germans migrated in the last 200 years; but the great majority of their descendants no longer speak German.
• Germany (officially The Federal Republic of Germany, German: Deutschland) is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the heart of Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea, to the south by Austria and Switzerland, to the west by France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic.
• Germany is a democratic federal parliamentary state, made up of 16 federal states (Länder or, more commonly, Bundesländer), which in certain spheres act independently of the Federation.
• The Federal Republic of Germany is a member state of the United Nations, NATO, the G8 nations and a founding member of what is now the European Union.