Germany

The Roman limes still runs beneath Trier, Cologne and Regensburg. From Charlemagne to the Reformation, Germany was the laboratory of Western Christianity: Boniface planted the Frankish Church, Luther translated the Bible and shaped the literary language, and its universities gave birth to classical philology.

Germania enters written history with Tacitus, but it was the Roman defeat at Teutoburg in AD 9 that fixed the Rhine frontier for centuries. On the left bank, Trier became an imperial capital; on the right, Germanic peoples organised themselves outside the Empire.

The coronation of Otto I in 962 founded the Holy Roman Empire, an unprecedented political construction claiming to continue Rome while resting on election and on the Church. That fragmented architecture of principalities, free cities and ecclesiastical states durably shaped German federalism.

The Lutheran Reformation (1517) broke religious unity and opened a century of wars culminating in the Thirty Years' War. Unification came only in 1871, under Prussian leadership. After the catastrophe of two world wars and the Shoah, the Federal Republic refounded itself in 1949 on the Basic Law, and regained its unity on 3 October 1990. Reunified Germany became the economic and institutional pivot of European integration.