Germans

the principal population of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; more than 56 million people; estimates here and below for 1972), the German Democratic Republic (GDR; 17 million), and West Berlin (2.1 million). Large groups of Germans also live in a number of European countries, as well as in the USSR, the USA, Canada, various Latin American countries, Australia, and South Africa. They speak German. In addition to the literary language, there are numerous dialects, which are used in everyday conversation. A number of regional features dating from the remote past have been preserved in the material and cultural life of the Germans. The strongest regional differences are those distinguishing the northern Germans from the southern Germans. In addition to the general designation “Germans,” a number of regional designations are used, including “Bavarians,” “Swabians,” and “Saxons.” In the GDR the majority of religious believers are Lutherans, and in the FRG, Lutherans and Catholics.

At the end of the first millennium B.C. and during the first centuries of the Common Era, ancient German tribes mingled with part of the more ancient population of the territory of Germany. In the west and southwest they intermarried with the Celts, and in the south, with the Rhaetians. The Roman conquests influenced the cultural development of the Rhine Germans and accelerated the dissolution of primitive communal relations among them. Tribal unions (for example, the Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Alemanni, and Thuringians), which had developed by the middle of the first millennium A.D., constituted the Germans’ ethnic foundation. Some instances of German unity are found even in the tenth century. The appearance of the terms teutoni, teutonicus, and Lingua teodisca (a folk [Teutonic] language) provides evidence of the birth of national self-consciousness at this time. The formation, as a result of the partition of the Carolingian Empire in 843, of the East Frankish kingdom, with a predominantly German-speaking population, is further evidence of the rise of national self-consciousness.

Certain West Slav and Baltic tribes (Prussians and related Lithuanian tribes), whose lands were seized by German feudal lords from the tenth through 13th centuries, became part of the formative German people. The national consolidation of the Germans was retarded by the protracted feudal fragmentation and economic division of the country, which lasted until the 19th century. The development of capitalist relations required the elimination of customs, financial, and other barriers. Unification took place under the aegis of Prussia in 1871, after which the formation of the German nation (natsiia, nation in the historical sense) was basically complete. Industrialization and the subsequent movement of the population to the cities contributed to the leveling of population in an ethnologic sense.

In 1949, two states with opposing social systems were established on the territory of Germany. Socioeconomically and culturally, the development of the two Germanies has been completely different. A socialist German nation is developing in the GDR.