# Germany

Pronunciation: say "JUR-muh-nee" US /ˈd͡ʒɝ.mə.ni/, UK /ˈd͡ʒɜː.mə.ni/

## Proper noun

1. A country in Central Europe, formed in 1949 as West Germany and reunified with East Germany in 1990; officially the Federal Republic of Germany, with its capital at Berlin.
   - Simple: A country in central Europe whose capital is Berlin, often called the Federal Republic of Germany.
   - _Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community._
   - _After 1990, Germany moved its seat of government from Bonn back to Berlin._
2. The German nation and the German-speaking lands of Central Europe, considered as a whole across history rather than as any one state.
   - Simple: The lands of Central Europe where German people live and speak German, thought of across all of history.
   - _Germany gave the world figures like Bach, Kant, and Einstein._
   - _Long before any single state existed, Germany was bound together by a common language and culture._
3. A republic formed in 1918 with its capital at Berlin, including the period after 1933 when the Nazi regime controlled it.
   - Simple: The German state that began in 1918 and was run by the Nazis after 1933, with its capital at Berlin.
   - _Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933._
   - _By 1939, Germany had annexed Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia._
4. The unified empire established under Prussian leadership in 1871, with its capital at Berlin.
   - Simple: The German empire created by Prussia in 1871, with its capital at Berlin.
   - _Germany acquired several overseas colonies during the 1880s._
   - _Germany allied with Austria-Hungary in the years before the First World War._
5. The various German states considered over time or during periods of division and disunity, sometimes loosely including the Holy Roman Empire and the other holdings of Austria-Hungary.
   - Simple: The separate German states during times when the German lands were divided rather than united as one nation.
   - _After 1949, crossing from one Germany to the other meant passing through guarded checkpoints._
   - _Napoleon reshaped the patchwork of Germanies into a smaller number of larger states._
7. A nominal medieval kingdom forming part of the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires; by extension, now uncommonly, the entire Holy Roman Empire, and formerly the whole Austrian Habsburg empire.
   - Simple: A medieval German kingdom that formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, and sometimes the name for the whole empire.
   - _Charlemagne's successors partitioned the empire, and Germany emerged as the eastern kingdom._
   - _For much of the medieval period, Germany formed the core of the Holy Roman Empire._

## Proper noun

6. The socialist state founded in 1949 with Berlin as its capital, usually called East Germany in English. *(rare)*
   - Simple: The socialist German state formed in 1949, usually called East Germany, with its capital in Berlin.
   - _For Western visitors in the 1970s, a trip into socialist Germany meant visas and long border checks._
   - _Travel between East Germany and the West was tightly restricted for decades._

## Other meanings

- (proper noun) A township in Adams County, in the US state of Pennsylvania.
- (proper noun) A community in Clark County, Indiana, in the United States, that has no municipal government of its own.
- (proper noun) A community in Houston County, Texas, in the United States, that is not incorporated as a town or city.

## Origin

Latin Germānia ("land of the Germans") came into Old English as Germanie or Germania and then into Middle English as Germanie. It was named for the Germānī, a people who lived around the Rhine and to its east, first clearly recorded in Julius Caesar's writings of the 1st century B.C.E. Where their name comes from is uncertain. Strabo tied it to germānus ("close kin, genuine"), but this seems unsupported, and later efforts to find Germanic or Celtic roots all run into problems, though it may be cognate with Old Irish gair ("neighbor").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/germany (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).