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Germany, situated at the heart of Europe, has been the fountainhead of many ideas, people and movements throughout the ages. A trip through Germany leaves one with an overwhelming sense of history reconciled with imminent modernity. From the businesslike atmosphere of Frankfurt to the strip joints of Hamburg, feel the charming flamboyancy of Munich or walk through the historic treasures of Berlin, go back in time through castles of Heidelberg or go wine tasting in the vineyards of the Rhine Valley. Or simply relax in a mountainside inn in the Bavarian Alps and breathe in the crisp air and savour the scenery.

The possibilities are as variegated as the nation itself.

Germany has given the world many important people who impacted the world- from composers like Bach, Handel, Schumann and Beethoven to philosophers like Kant and Hegel, to Albert Einstein to Adolf Hitler to name a few.

Historically Speaking

The legacy of a complex and eventful history, awaits the visitor everywhere in Germany – in the castles and palaces, churches and monasteries, war memorials and historic towns.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Germany has had a rocky history. Constantly swaying between disintegration and reunification over the centuries, modern Germany as we know it today is the result of centuries of political, cultural and religious evolution.

Occupied and ruled by the Germans, the Frankish invaders and Charlemagne, it became a part of the Holy Roman Empire by the 10th century. The Hapsburgs of Vienna ruled from the 13th century. Religious conflict marked the periods that followed, with Martin Luther pinning his thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Church. The Hapsburg rule lasted till these conflicts broke into the Thirty Year War in 1618.

Following their decline, local princes and feudal lords took over control of the whole country, breaking it up into 300 different states. This was pretty much the prevailing political configuration when Napoleon marched into Germany in the 19th century. His ambitions were crushed in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, which was led by the defiant Prussians. In 1866 Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Prussia, annexed most of Germany after defeating France in 1871. The Prussian king, Wilhelm I, became the Kaiser and Germany was consolidated into a single unified state for the first time.

Wilhelm II led Germany into WWI, but fled the country in 1918 when the tide turned against him. Civil unrest and disastrous war penalties followed, with good portions of Rhineland getting apportioned off to the victors.

The Nazis under Hitler began to gain a stronghold in the years that followed, and declared a vehement campaign to avenge Germany’s bitter defeat in the past war, which culminated in the World War II. But this was not the only item on the agenda: Hitler’s intense anti-Semitic campaign saw to it that the Jewish population of Germany was all but wiped out in concentration camps and death factories. As the Nazis marched into Poland, France and Czechoslovakia in 1945, Hitler perpetuated his program of racial cleansing by herding off and killing Jews everywhere and pressing forth the banner of the "superior" Nazi race. In the end, however, British and American armies repulsed and defeated the German onslaught in July 1945, resulting in Hitler’s suicide.

After the Nazi defeat and Hitler’s death, Germany was divided into East and West by the Allied powers. The Berlin Wall worked as the physical as well as political barrier between Communist East Germany and the Democratic West. For almost half a century, the nation’s division was a living symbol of the Cold War, and a focal point of strife between the two economic systems viz capitalism and socialism. In 1990, East Germany was reunited with the West under the Unification Treaty, and the two estranged parts of the same nation became one.

Habitat

From north to south, the German landscape takes the visitor through a steady gradation in topography from low coast to high mountain. The cool islands of the Baltic and North Sea are followed by the adjoining plains and rivers, which in turn give way to the densely wooded hills along the Rhine, and finally the climatic crescendo – the splendid Germanic Alps along the Southern border await your discovery.