Germany

Germany is a country in Europe.

In the north, the land is flat and meets the sea. In the south, there are tall mountains. Big forests grow in between. The capital city is Berlin.

Germany is in north-central Europe. In the north it has coasts on two seas, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, and wide, low plains. In the middle are forested hills and low mountains, and in the far south the land rises to the Alps.

So Germany gets higher from north to south: from a few spots near the coast that are a little below sea level up to the Zugspitze, 2,962 meters tall. About 83.5 million people lived in Germany in 2025. The country is divided into 16 states, and its capital is Berlin.

Britannica describes Germany as crossing the main east-west landform zones of western central Europe. In the south it reaches the outermost ranges of the Alps and the Alpine Foreland; its core is the Central German Uplands, a mix of forested block mountains, plateaus and basins; and in the north the North German Plain, part of the great North European Plain, is fringed by marshes, mudflats and islands. Altitude falls from 2,962 m at the Zugspitze to small areas just below sea level near the coast.

Germany covers about 357,600 square kilometers and had about 83.5 million people in 2025. Its 1949 constitution created a federal system that gives major powers to the Länder: there are 16 since the accession of East Germany, of which Bavaria is the largest and North Rhine–Westphalia the most populous. Berlin is the capital.

Berlin is the capital of Germany.

It has a big stone gate with tall columns. Neuschwanstein is a castle built for a king. He wanted it to look like a castle from long ago.

Berlin, the capital, is home to about 3.7 million people (2025). The Brandenburg Gate, built from 1788 to 1791, has 12 stone columns and stands about 20 meters high. For many years it stood beside the wall that divided the city, and it became a symbol of Germany coming together again.

Near the town of Füssen in Bavaria, King Ludwig II began building Neuschwanstein Castle in 1868. It was never finished, and only about a dozen rooms were completed, but about 1.3 million people visit it each year. In Cologne, a huge cathedral took more than 600 years to finish.

Berlin, with about 3.7 million people (2025), is the capital of reunified Germany. The Brandenburg Gate, commissioned by Frederick William II and built in 1788–91 to designs by Carl G. Langhans, is a sandstone structure of 12 Doric columns forming five passages, about 20 m high. Closed when the Berlin Wall divided the city, it reopened on 22 December 1989, and Britannica calls it a symbol of both division and reunification.

Neuschwanstein, commissioned by King Louis (Ludwig) II of Bavaria, was begun in 1868 as an idealized medieval-style castle and never completed; only about a dozen rooms were finished, and it draws about 1.3 million visitors a year. Cologne Cathedral, a World Heritage Site since 1996, was begun in 1248 and completed only in 1880, faithful to the medieval plans; its towers rise 157 m. Aachen Cathedral grew around the chapel Charlemagne built between 793 and 813, and UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 1978.

The Rhine is a big river in Germany.

Boats carry things up and down it. Old castles stand on its hills. Thick forests cover the mountains. In the south, the Alps are tall and snowy.

The Rhine starts in the mountains of Switzerland and flows north through Germany to the North Sea. It carries so much water all year that it became one of the busiest waterways in Europe. In one stretch, the Middle Rhine Valley, the river cuts through a deep gorge lined with vineyards, small towns and old castles.

Forests and hills, such as the Black Forest, cover the middle and south of Germany. The weather is mostly mild and damp near the North Sea, with colder winters and hotter summers farther east and south.

Britannica calls the Rhine the busiest waterway in Europe. Rising in east-central Switzerland, it flows through Lake Constance, skirts the Black Forest and crosses the Central German Uplands before entering the Netherlands. It is fed both by Alpine snowmelt in late spring and summer and by tributaries such as the Neckar, Main and Moselle, which peak in winter, so its flow is powerful and even. The 65 km Middle Rhine Valley, a World Heritage Site since 2002, includes the Loreley narrows, no more than 130 m wide.

The Zugspitze (2,962 m) stands high because it was raised by the earth movements that began some 37 to 24 million years ago and created the Alps. The climate is temperate: moist westerly air from the North Sea gives the northwest mild winters, humidity and fog, while the east and southeast have a more continental climate. Germany's largest lake, Lake Constance, is shared with Switzerland and Austria.

White storks build big nests of sticks.

Some nests sit on top of chimneys! Wild boars live in Germany too. Beavers live in the hills of the middle and south.

Germany's large forests and mountains are home to many wild animals. Deer and hares live in most regions, and chamois and ibex climb in the Alps. Wild boars live in the forests, and beavers, badgers and martens live in the hills of the center and south.

White storks build enormous nests of sticks on chimneys and church towers near wet marshes. Along the North Sea coast, the tidal mudflats of the Wadden Sea are a stopping place for millions of migrating birds.

Britannica attributes Germany's surprising variety of wildlife to its large forests and mountains with scattered settlement. Deer, quail and pheasant are common, with chamois and ibex in the Alps, all protected by strict game laws; the wild boar population soared after World War II and has since been reduced. The wildcat has recovered, especially in the Eifel, Hunsrück and Harz, and the lynx has reappeared near the Czech border; polecats, martens, weasels, beavers and badgers live in the central and southern uplands.

White storks have declined but still nest on chimneys and church towers near undrained marsh; white-tailed eagles live by the lakes of the North German Plain and golden eagles in the Alps. The Wadden Sea, a World Heritage Site since 2009 that stretches from the Netherlands through Germany to Denmark, is the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world: up to 6.1 million birds can be there at once, and 10 to 12 million pass through each year.

About 83 million people live in Germany.

Most people speak German. People in different places say words in different ways. Many families came from other countries to live here.

About 83.5 million people lived in Germany in 2025, and the most people live in the state of North Rhine–Westphalia. German is the official language, but it sounds different from region to region. Low German is still spoken near the North and Baltic seas, and Bavarian is spoken south of the Danube River.

Many people have moved to Germany from other countries, including Turkey and countries in North Africa and South Asia. Germany has old university towns too: Heidelberg's university was founded in 1386.

Germany had about 83.5 million people at the end of 2025 (Destatis). German is the official language; standard German is a hybrid of central and southern dialects with northern pronunciation that became universal only in the late 19th century. Britannica maps three dialect groups onto the landform zones: Low German on the North German Plain, Central German in the Uplands, and Upper German (including Swabian, Alemannic and Bavarian) in the south. Low German is still used in some radio, newspapers and schools, and small pockets of Frisian survive.

Britannica notes that many refugees and migrants have come to Germany, especially from North Africa, Turkey and South Asia, and that more than one million migrants arrived in the 2010s after the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War. Heidelberg's university, founded in 1386, is one of Europe's oldest, and Mainz was long one of its most important publishing centers. Germany has no official religion.