parliamentary republic
in Europe
. The country consists of 16 states while the capital
and largest city is Berlin
. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union
.
933 After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeats a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade near the Unstrut river.
1014 Pope Benedict VIII recognizes Henry of Bavaria as King of Germany.
1028 Henry III, son of Conrad, is elected king of the Germans.
1152 Frederick I Barbarossa is elected King of the Germans.
1241 Battle of Liegnitz: Mongol forces defeat the Polish and German armies.
1266 Battle of Benevento: An army led by Charles, Count of Anjou, defeats a combined German and Sicilian force led by King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred is killed in the battle and Pope Clement IV invests Charles as king of Sicily and Naples.
1284 the legendary Pied Piper leads 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany
1362 A storm tide in the North Sea destroys the German city of Rungholt on the island of Strand.
1374 A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.
1484 Pope Innocent VIII issues the ''Summis desiderantes'', a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.
Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep. 
"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth." ~ Mark Twain