Names of Germany - History

History

The terminology for "Germany", the "German states" and "Germans" is complicated by the history of many different states in which German was the dominant language. Not until 1871 was there a nation state called Germany.

Name of the state Period National Diet House of regional representatives Regional states
Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation until 1806 (Did not exist) (Immerwährender) Reichstag (Reichsstände)
Deutscher Bund 1815–1848/1866 (Did not exist) Bundesversammlung (often: Bundestag) Bundesstaaten
Deutsches Reich 1848/1849 Reichstag (Volkshaus) Reichstag (Staatenhaus) Staaten
Norddeutscher Bund 1866/1867–1871 Reichstag Bundesrat Bundesstaaten
Deutsches Reich 1871–1919 Reichstag Bundesrat Bundesstaaten
Deutsches Reich 1919–1933/1945 Reichstag Reichsrat Länder
Bundesrepublik Deutschland since 1949 Bundestag Bundesrat Länder (often: Bundesländer)
Deutsche Demokratische Republik 1949–1990 Volkskammer (Did not exist) Bezirke

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Famous quotes containing the word history:

    These anyway might think it was important
    That human history should not be shortened.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.
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    There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)