Germans

The Germans (German: die Deutschen), or the German people, are a nation in the meaning an ethnos (in German: Volk), defined more by a sense of sharing a common German culture and having a German mother tongue, than by citizenship or by being subjects to any particular country. In the world today, approximately 100 million have German as their mother tongue. If a distinction is made between Germans and Ethnic Germans, the latter are distinguished by living outside of the Federal Republic of Germany and not holding German citizenship.

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The concept of who is a German has varied. Until the 19th century, it denoted the speakers of German, and was a much more distinct concept than that of Germany, the land of the Germans. The Dutch and the Swiss had already split off and shaped separate national identities. Swiss Germans, however, retained their cultural identity as German, albeit as a specific German subculture.

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In the 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire (of the German nation), Austria and Prussia would emerge as two opposite poles in Germany, trying to re-establish the divided German nation. In 1870, Prussia attracted even Bavaria in the Franco-Prussian War and the creation of the German Empire as a German nation-state, effectively excluding the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy. From this time on, the connotation of Germans came to shift gradually from "speakers of the German language" to "Imperial Germans."

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Before World War II, most Austrians considered themselves German and denied the existence of a distinct Austrian ethnic identity. It was only after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II that this began to change. After the world war, the Austrians increasingly saw themselves as a nation distinct from the other German-speaking areas of Europe, and today, polls indicate that no more than ten percent of the German-speaking Austrians see themselves as part of a larger German nation linked by blood or language.

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Ethnic Germans form an important minority group in several countries in central and eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Romania) as well as in Namibia and in southern Brazil. Until the 1990s two million Ethnic Germans lived throughout the former Soviet Union, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan. In the United States, 65 million people are fully or partly of German ancestry, forming the largest single ethnic group in the country. Most Americans of German descent live in the Mid-Atlantic states (especially Pennsylvania) and the northern Midwest (especially in Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and eastern Missouri.)

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German: German may mean:...

Nation: :For publications of this name, see also Nation (disambiguation)....

Ethnos: Ethnos (in "nation") may refer to:...

Germans related Images and Photos (experimental)

Germans Ravage France	Germans Tall Ship Alexander Von Humbolt	Cossack Sacks Germans c.1914	Germans Defend Their Land from the Romans
Germans Repel a French Attack on the Trenches in Champagne France	Germans Invading Neutral Belgium Believe That Franc- Tireurs (Free-Shooters) are Resisting Them	Germans Warned off Buying French and Belgian Goods During the Occupation	French and Germans at Close Quarters in the Forest of Argonne 1914-19
The Russian Cavalry Fighting the Germans in a Village in 1915	Germans Unloading Paintings Taken from Uffizi Museum to Be Hidden for Safekeeping During War WWII	Germans Unloading Paintings Taken from Uffizi Museum to Be Hidden for Safekeeping During War WWII	General Franco's 'Blue' Division Fights Alongside the Germans on the Russian Front