Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
Sigismund of Luxembourg was Prince-elector of Brandenburg from 1378 until 1388 and from 1411 until 1415, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1387, King of Germany from 1411, King of Bohemia from 1419, King of Italy from 1431, Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 until 1437, the last male member of the House of Luxembourg. In 1396 he led the Crusade of Nicopolis, which attempted to liberate Bulgaria and save the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople from Ottoman rule. Afterwards, he founded the Order of the Dragon to fight the Turks, he was regarded as educated, spoke several languages and was an outgoing person who took pleasure in the tournament. Sigismund was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance that ended the Papal Schism, but which led to the Hussite Wars that dominated the period of Sigismund's life. Born in Nuremberg, Sigismund was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, of his fourth wife, Elizabeth of Pomerania, the granddaughter of King Casimir III of Poland and the great-granddaughter of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Gediminas.
He was named after Saint Sigismund of the favourite saint of Sigismund's father. From Sigismund's childhood he was nicknamed the "ginger fox" in the Crown of Bohemia, on account of his hair colour. King Louis the Great of Hungary and Poland always had a good and close relationship with Emperor Charles IV, Sigismund was betrothed to Louis' eldest daughter, Mary, in 1374, when he was six years old. Upon his father's death in 1378, young Sigismund became Margrave of Brandenburg and was sent to the Hungarian court, where he soon learnt the Hungarian language and way of life, became devoted to his adopted country. King Louis appointed him his successor as King of Hungary. In 1381, the 13-year-old Sigismund was sent to Kraków by his eldest half-brother and guardian Wenceslaus, King of Germany and Bohemia, to learn Polish and to become acquainted with the land and its people. King Wenceslaus gave him Neumark to facilitate communication between Brandenburg and Poland; the disagreement between Polish landlords of Lesser Poland on one side and landlords of Greater Poland on the other, regarding the choice of the future King of Poland ended in choosing the Lithuanian side.
The support of the lords of Greater Poland was however not enough to give Prince Sigismund the Polish crown. Instead, the landlords of Lesser Poland gave it to Mary's younger sister Jadwiga I of Poland, who married Jogaila of Lithuania. On the death of her father in 1382, his betrothed, became queen of Hungary and Sigismund married her in 1385 in Zólyom; the next year, he was accepted as Mary's future co-ruler by the Treaty of Győr. However, Mary was captured, together with her mother, Elizabeth of Bosnia, who had acted as regent, in 1387 by the rebellious House of Horvat, Bishop Paul Horvat of Mačva, his brother John Horvat and younger brother Ladislav. Sigismund's mother-in-law was strangled. Having secured the support of the nobility, Sigismund was crowned King of Hungary at Székesfehérvár on 31 March 1387. Having raised money by pledging Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, margrave of Moravia, he was engaged for the next nine years in a ceaseless struggle for the possession of this unstable throne.
The central power was weakened to such an extent that only Sigismund's alliance with the powerful Czillei-Garai League could ensure his position on the throne. It was not for selfless reasons that one of the leagues of barons helped him to power: Sigismund had to pay for the support of the lords by transferring a sizeable part of the royal properties.. The restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades of work; the bulk of the nation headed by the House of Garai was with him. Not until 1395 did Nicholas II Garay succeed in suppressing them. Mary died pregnant in 1395. To ease the pressure from Hungarian nobles, Sigismund tried to employ foreign advisors, not popular, he had to promise not to give land and nominations to other than Hungarian nobles. However, this was not applied to Stibor of Stiboricz, Sigismund's closest friend and advisor. On a number of occasions, Sigismund was imprisoned by nobles, but with help of the armies of Garai and Stibor of Stiboricz, he would regain power.
In 1396, Sigismund led the combined armies of Christendom against the Turks, who had taken advantage of the temporary helplessness of Hungary to extend their dominion to the banks of the Danube. This crusade, preached by Pope Boniface IX, was popular in Hungary; the nobles flocked in their thousands to the royal standard, were reinforced by volunteers from nearly every part of Europe. The most important contingent being that of the French led by John the Fearless, son of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy. Sigismund set out with a flotilla of 70 galleys. After capturing Vidin, he camped with his Hungarian armies before the fortress of Nicopolis. Sultan Bayezid I raised the siege of Constantinople and, at the head of 140,000 men defeated the Christian forces in the Battle of Nicopolis fought between the 25 and 28 September 1396. Sigismund returned by sea and through the realm of Zeta, where he ordained a local Montenegrin lord Đurađ II with the islands of Hvar and Korčula for resis
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg is a state in southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the border with France. It is Germany's third-largest state, with an area of 11 million inhabitants. Baden-Württemberg is a parliamentary republic and sovereign, federated state, formed in 1952 by a merger of the states of Württemberg-Baden, Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern; the largest city in Baden-Württemberg is the state capital of Stuttgart, followed by Karlsruhe and Mannheim. Other cities are Freiburg im Breisgau, Heilbronn, Pforzheim and Ulm; the sobriquet Ländle is sometimes used as a synonym for Baden-Württemberg. Baden-Württemberg is formed from the historical territories of Baden, Prussian Hohenzollern, Württemberg, parts of Swabia. In 100 AD, the Roman Empire invaded and occupied Württemberg, constructing a limes along its northern borders. Over the course of the third century AD, the Alemanni forced the Romans to retreat west beyond the Rhine and Danube rivers. In 496 AD the Alemanni were defeated by a Frankish invasion led by Clovis I.
The Holy Roman Empire was established. The majority of people in this region continued to be Roman Catholics after the Protestant Reformation influenced populations in northern Germany. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, numerous people emigrated from this rural area to the United States for economic reasons. After World War II, the Allies established three federal states in the territory of modern-day Baden-Württemberg: Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Württemberg-Baden. Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern were occupied by France, while Württemberg-Baden was occupied by the United States. In 1949, each state became a founding member of the Federal Republic of Germany, with Article 118 of the German constitution providing an accession procedure. On 16 December 1951, Württemberg-Baden, Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Baden voted via referendum in favor of a joint merger. Baden-Württemberg became a state in West Germany on 25 April 1952. Baden-Württemberg shares borders with the German states of Rhineland Palatinate and Bavaria, Switzerland.
Most of the major cities of Baden-Württemberg straddle the banks of the Neckar River, which runs downstream through the state past Tübingen, Heilbronn and Mannheim. The Rhine forms the western border as well as large portions of the southern border; the Black Forest, the main mountain range of the state, rises east of the Upper Rhine valley. The high plateau of the Swabian Alb, between the Neckar, the Black Forest, the Danube, is an important European watershed. Baden-Württemberg shares Lake Constance with Switzerland and Bavaria, the international borders within its waters not being defined, it shares the foothills of the Alps with Bavaria and the Austrian Vorarlberg, but Baden-Württemberg does not border Austria over land. The Danube River has its source in Baden-Württemberg near the town of Donaueschingen, in a place called Furtwangen in the Black Forest. Baden-Württemberg is divided into thirty-five districts and nine independent cities, both grouped into the four Administrative Districts of Freiburg, Stuttgart, Tübingen.
Map Baden-Württemberg contains nine additional independent cities not belonging to any district: The state parliament of Baden-Württemberg is the Landtag. The politics of Baden-Württemberg have traditionally been dominated by the conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany, who until 2011 had led all but one government since the establishment of the state in 1952. In the Landtag elections held on 27 March 2011 voters replaced the Christian Democrats and centre-right Free Democrats coalition by a Greens-led alliance with the Social Democrats which secured a four-seat majority in the state parliament. From 1992 to 2001, the Republicans party held seats in the Landtag; the Baden-Württemberg General Auditing Office acts as an independent body to monitor the correct use of public funds by public offices. Although Baden-Württemberg has few natural resources compared to other regions of Germany, the state is among the most prosperous and wealthiest regions in Europe with a low unemployment rate historically.
A number of well-known enterprises are headquartered in the state, for example Daimler AG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Carl Zeiss AG, SAP SE and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen. In spite of this, Baden-Württemberg's economy is dominated by medium-sized enterprises. Although poor in workable natural resources and still rural in many areas, the region is industrialised. In 2003, there were 8,800 manufacturing enterprises with more than 20 employees, but only 384 with more than 500; the latter category accounts for 43% of the 1.2 million persons employed in industry. The Mittelstand or mid-sized company is the backbone of the Baden-Württemberg economy. Medium-sized businesses and a tradition of branching out into different industrial sectors have ensured specialization over a wide range. A fifth of the "old" Federal Republic's industrial gross value added is generated by Baden-Württemberg. Turnover for manufacturing in 2003 e
Alemanni
The Alemanni were a confederation of Germanic tribes on the Upper Rhine River. First mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Caracalla of 213, the Alemanni captured the Agri Decumates in 260, expanded into present-day Alsace, northern Switzerland, leading to the establishment of the Old High German language in those regions, by the eighth century named Alamannia. In 496, the Alemanni were incorporated into his dominions. Mentioned as still pagan allies of the Christian Franks, the Alemanni were Christianized during the seventh century; the Lex Alamannorum is a record of their customary law during this period. Until the eighth century, Frankish suzerainty over Alemannia was nominal. After an uprising by Theudebald, Duke of Alamannia, Carloman executed the Alamannic nobility and installed Frankish dukes. During the and weaker years of the Carolingian Empire, the Alemannic counts became independent, a struggle for supremacy took place between them and the Bishopric of Constance.
The chief family in Alamannia was that of the counts of Raetia Curiensis, who were sometimes called margraves, one of whom, Burchard II, established the Duchy of Swabia, recognized by Henry the Fowler in 919 and became a stem duchy of the Holy Roman Empire. The area settled by the Alemanni corresponds to the area where Alemannic German dialects remain spoken, including German Swabia and Baden, French Alsace, German-speaking Switzerland and Austrian Vorarlberg; the French language name of Germany, Allemagne, is derived from their name, from Old French aleman, from French loaned into a number of other languages. The Spanish name for Germany is Alemania, Welsh is Yr Almaen. According to Gaius Asinius Quadratus, the name Alamanni means "all men", it indicates. The Romans and the Greeks called them as such mentioned; this derivation was accepted by Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and by the anonymous contributor of notes assembled from the papers of Nicolas Fréret, published in 1753.
This etymology has remained the standard derivation of the name. An alternative suggestion proposes derivation from *alah "sanctuary". Walafrid Strabo in the 9th century remarked, in discussing the people of Switzerland and the surrounding regions, that only foreigners called them the Alemanni, but that they gave themselves the name of Suebi; the Suebi are given the alternative name of Ziuwari in an Old High German gloss, interpreted by Jacob Grimm as Martem colentes. The Alemanni were first mentioned by Cassius Dio describing the campaign of Caracalla in 213. At that time, they dwelt in the basin of the Main, to the south of the Chatti. Cassius Dio portrays the Alemanni as victims of this treacherous emperor, they had asked for his help, according to Dio, but instead he colonized their country, changed their place names, executed their warriors under a pretext of coming to their aid. When he became ill, the Alemanni claimed to have put a hex on him. Caracalla, tried to counter this influence by invoking his ancestral spirits.
In retribution, Caracalla led the Legio II Traiana Fortis against the Alemanni, who lost and were pacified for a time. The legion was as a result honored with the name Germanica." The fourth-century fictional Historia Augusta, Life of Antoninus Caracalla, relates that Caracalla assumed the name Alemannicus,"at which Helvius Pertinax jested that he should be called Geticus Maximus," because in the year before he had murdered his brother, Geta. Through much of his short reign, Caracalla was known for unpredictable and arbitrary operations launched by surprise after a pretext of peace negotiations. If he had any reasons of state for such actions, they remained unknown to his contemporaries. Whether or not the Alemanni had been neutral, they were further influenced by Caracalla to become thereafter notoriously implacable enemies of Rome; this mutually antagonistic relationship is the reason why the Roman writers persisted in calling the Alemanni barbari," meaning "savages." The archaeology, shows that they were Romanized, lived in Roman-style houses and used Roman artifacts, the Alemannic women having adopted the Roman fashion of the tunica earlier than the men.
Most of the Alemanni were at the time, in fact, resident in or close to the borders of Germania Superior. Although Dio is the earliest writer to mention them, Ammianus Marcellinus used the name to refer to Germans on the Limes Germanicus in the time of Trajan's governorship of the province shortly after it was formed, around 98-99 AD. At that time, the entire frontier was being fortified for the first time. Trees from the earliest fortifications found in Germania Inferior are dated by dendrochronology to 99-100 AD. Ammianus relates that much the Emperor Julian undertook a punitive expedition against the Alemanni, who by were in Alsace, crossed the Main, entering the forest, where the trails were blocked by felled trees; as winter was upon them, they reoccupied a "fortification, founded on the soil of the Alemanni that Trajan wished to be called with his own name". In this context, the use of Alemanni is an anachronism, but it reveals that Ammianus believed they were the same people, consistent with the location of the Alemanni of Caracalla's campaigns.
Germania by Tacitus in Chapter 42 states that the Hermunduri were a tribe located in the region that became
Überlingen
Überlingen is a German city on the northern shore of Lake Constance. After the city of Friedrichshafen, it is the second largest city in the Bodenseekreis, a central point for the outlying communities. Since January 1, 1993, Überlingen has been categorized as a large district city; the history of Überlingen dates back to Roman times, but a variety of settlements pre-dated Roman occupation. Stone age settlements, discovered along the shoreline of Lake Constance, document that the lake supported several dozen thriving communities of 50–100 individuals; these settlements fall under the category of the Hallstatt culture, their habits and diet has been illuminated through the excavation of archaeological sites, such as a major site in Hallstadt, excavated in the mid-to late 19th century. Similar sites, although smaller, have been found in vicinity of Überlingen: a site near Hodingen, another near Dettingen, by Constance, a major site near the village of Unteruhldingen, where there is now an open air archaeological museum.
The dead were either buried in mounds or flat graves. Tools uncovered in archeological excavation suggest that these communities engaged in a combination of hunting and agriculture; the Alpine lands and the eastern Swiss Plateau were overrun by the troops of the emperor Augustus, who established the Roman writ from the Alps to the Danube, through the efforts of Augustus' stepsons Drusus and Tiberius. According to some interpretations of the Roman records, one of the Bodensee islands Mainau was the operations base for the military operations in the year 15 BCE; the necessities of troop transport and ship building and maintenance required the Romans to possess the entire Swiss shore of the lake, from these points along the lake, the Romans could mount a double-pointed excursion to the eastern Tyrol and present-day Bavaria, or to the West, in the Rhine valley. The Bodensee region, as a Roman province administered from Augusta Vindelicorum, present day Augsburg, was governed by a Finance official under Tiberius's command.
The road from Stockach to Überlingen, along the lake's shore to Uhldingen and on to Friedrichshafen, the east-west train tracks follow the path of the old Roman road. Evidence of conflicts between the Romans, their power waning, the Allemanic and other Germanic groups, their power rising, appears throughout the region. New settlements appeared on top of burned settlements and old villages and farmsteads reclaimed first by forests and meadows and again reclaimed by men. By the latter half of the fourth century, several families emerged as the warrior leaders, capable of fending off minor Roman come-backs, of protecting themselves, their kin, their dependents from not only the Romans, but other groups; as the Romans withdrew more and more of their forces, to concentrate on the western boundaries or to focus on the conquest defense of Iberia, Franks Clodwig, or Clovis, Goths Theodorich contested for control of the region. Throughout this period, Allemanic dukes maintained their primary seat in Überlingen.
The Alemannic Überlingen was first mentioned in 770 as Iburinga. Before that, it was known as Gunzoburg, the seat of the Alemannic or Swabian duke Gunzo; the probable site of Gunzo's villa has been identified in the northwestern quadrant of the city, just outside the present day inner moat. The Allemanic dukes were well connected to other families throughout Europe. Louis the Pious 814-840 and Louis the German 843-876 both married women from the Allemmanic Welfen families. In the 10th century, the Linzgau fell to an invasion of the Hungarians, ongoing battles with the Hungarians nearly brought the families of the region to ruin; the Investiture Controversy of the 11th-century brought further conflict. Villages and properties in the possession of one side of the conflict would be besieged and destroyed by members of the other party, in gruesome battle after gruesome battle, but by the end of the 11th century, the first half of the 12th, the Hohenstaufen emperors stabilized the Holy Roman Empire.
The family came from the region and Swabia, the Linzgau, the Bodensee region became the middle point of the Empire. This is the beginning of Überlingen's period of blossoming. Many of the documents from the period have been lost in the city fire in 1279, but a great deal can be extrapolated. Hand in hand with the expansion of the Holy Roman Empire, localities throughout the empire experienced infrastructure improvements: improved roads and exchange regulations encouraged trade in the all important centrally located Swabia; the exact date in which the city received its market rights is ambiguous, but it was between 1180 and 1191. He had been in the region several times: 1153, 1155, 1162, 1181, 1183, to hold court sessions, in 1187 he stayed in Wallhausen, across the lake, to sign the documents establishing the Cloister of Salem. At the end of the 14th century the city was granted status as a free imperial city. In 1547, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, broadened the city's market rights to prohibit any trade in grain o
German Army
The German Army is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr together with the Marine and the Luftwaffe; as of 28 February 2019, the German Army had a strength of 62,194 soldiers. A German Army, equipped and trained following a single doctrine, permanently unified under one command dates from 1871, the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. From 1871 to 1919 the title Deutsches Heer was the official name of the German land forces. Following the German defeat in World War I and the end of the German Empire the main army was dissolved. From 1921 to 1935 the name of the German land forces was Reichsheer and from 1935 to 1945 the name Heer was used; the Heer was one of two ground forces of the Third Reich during World War II, but unlike the Heer, the Waffen-SS was not a branch of the Wehrmacht, but was a combat force under the Nazi Party's own Schutzstaffel forces. The Heer was formally disbanded in August 1946.
After World War II Germany was split into two sovereign states and both formed their own militaries: on 12 November 1955 the first recruits began their service in the West German Heer, while on 1 March 1956 the East German Landstreitkräfte der NVA were founded. During the Cold War the West German Army was integrated into NATOs command structure, while the Landstreitkräfte were part of the Warsaw Pact. Following the German reunification in 1990 the Landstreitkräfte were integrated into the German Army. Since the German Army has been employed in peacekeeping operations worldwide and since 2002 in combat operations in Afghanistan as part of NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Following World War II the Allies dissolved the Wehrmacht with all its branches on 20 August 1946; however one year after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949 and because of its increasing links with the West under German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Consultative Assembly of Europe began to consider the formation of a European Defence Community with German participation on 11 August 1950.
Former high-ranking German Wehrmacht officers outlined in the Himmeroder memorandum a plan for a "German contingent in an international force for the defense of Western Europe." For the German land forces the memorandum envisioned the formation of a 250,000 strong army. The officers saw the need for the formation of twelve Panzer divisions and six corps staffs with accompanying Corps troops, as only armored divisions could muster a fighting force to throw back the numerically far superior forces of the Warsaw Pact. On 26 October 1950 Theodor Blank was appointed "officer of the Federal Chancellor for the Strengthening of Allied Troops questions"; this Defence Ministry forerunner was known somewhat euphemistically as the Blank Office, but explicitly used to prepare for the rearmament of West Germany. By March 1954 the Blank Office had finished plans for a new German army. Plans foresaw the formation of six infantry, four armoured, two mechanised infantry divisions, as the German contribution to the defense of Western Europe in the framework of a European Defence Community.
On 8 February 1952 the Bundestag approved a German contribution to the defense of Western Europe and on 26 February 1954 the Basic Law of the Republic was amended with the insertion of an article regarding the defence of the sovereignty of the federal government. Following a decision at the London Nine Power Conference of 28 September to 3 October 1954, Germany's entry into NATO effective from 9 May 1955 was accepted as a replacement for the failed European Defence Community plan. Afterwards the Blank Office was converted to the Defence Ministry and Theodor Blank became the first Defence Minister; the nucleus of army was the so-called V Branch of the Department of Defence. Subdivisions included were VB Organisation and VC Logistics; the army saw itself explicitly not as a successor to the defeated Wehrmacht, but as in the traditions of the Prussian military reformers of 1807 to 1814 and the members of the military resistance during National Socialism. For lack of alternatives the officer corps was made up of former Wehrmacht officers.
The first Chief of the Army was the former Wehrmacht General der Panzertruppe Hans Rottiger, involved in the drafting of the Himmeroder memorandum. The official date of the founding of the army is 12 November 1955 when the first soldiers began their service in Andernach. In 1956 the first troops set up seven training companies in Andernach and began the formation of schools and training centers. On 1 April 1957, the first conscripts arrived for service in the army; the first military organisations created were instructional battalions, officer schools, the Army Academy, the forerunner to the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr in Hamburg. In total of twelve armoured and infantry divisions were to be established by 1959, as planned in Army Structure I. To achieve this goal existing units were split every six months; however the creation of all twelve divisions did not take place until 1965. At the end of 1958 the strength of the army was about 100,000 men; the army was equipped at first such as the M-47 Patton main battle tank.
Three corps commands were formed beginning in 1957: the I Corps, II Corps, the III Corps. In 1957 the "Office for Territorial Defence" was established as the highest Territorial Army authority; the Office for Territorial Defence
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
