History
Since the age of industrialisation, the country has been a driver, innovator, and beneficiary of an ever more globalised economy. Germany is a founding member of the EU, the G8 and the G20 and was the world's largest exporter from 2003 to 2008. In 2011, it remains the third largest exporter and third largest importer. It generates a trade surplus of $189.7 billion.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Germany
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
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“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
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“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)